


Waking Up

by fadeverb



Series: Leo [7]
Category: In Nomine
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 17:26:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 28,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/902924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeverb/pseuds/fadeverb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leo's having a great time in the Marches. Of course that can't last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Old Friends Come Calling

When Ferro comes clambering up the walls to see me, I'm on the balcony of the apartment, watching the sun sink into the Nile. It's not the real Nile, nor is it the real sun, but that doesn't prevent the sunset from being absolutely brilliant, as well as promising another hit of Essence in twenty minutes. In deference to local sensibilities, the ethereal's image here is that of a kid of indeterminate gender, wearing a linen tunic splattered with mud. It pads over across the balcony to move a jackal-headed figure in our game. "Hey, Leo. You have a visitor."

I've been taking a break from the latest project to watch the sunset and enjoy the local beer. One can only design so many variations on the trap involving the giant rolling boulder before wishing the Marches weren't quite so...mutable. I blame Steven Spielberg, and possibly the makers of the Tomb Raider games while I'm at it. Everyone wants a series of implausible death traps for their tomb. "If it's a client, they can very well come back tomorrow. I can't do any work at night with the lighting around here." The candles and oil lamps may be highly authentic to the duplicated time period, but I've had better lighting from cheap desk lamps.

Ferro shrugs, and perches on the stone wall of the balcony, toes extending metal hooks to latch on more firmly. So that's not a perfectly adapted image for the Domain; it's still better than the first few weeks, when the spirit wanted to go driving along the banks of the Nile as a rusting black sports car. The local priests nearly had a conniption; I talked Fer out of the habit and into a more suitable guise. "Don't think it's a client. He didn't look local."

I'm halfway through a sip of beer, and I manage to swallow without choking, set down the bottle. (It doesn't look authentic, but if I'm going to buy the local beer, I'm very well going to put it into the bottles I dream up myself. A bottle is the natural habitat of a serving of beer.) "By not local, do you mean someone from, say, a Greek Domain is wandering through, or do you mean I should be worrying about celestials showing up to kill me?"

"I don't know," Ferro replies, face crinkling in irritation. "He's just...not local. Not dressed like people around here." I get an accusatory glance at this, because I'm not dressed to fit local custom either. But an oddly-dressed human image isn't as out of place in ancient Egypt as a sports car. "Didn't look hostile, but hostile things don't always. You want me to let him know he can come up, or shoo him away?"

I set my beer aside, and walk over to the edge of the balcony to look down at the street below. I'm on the fourth floor here, which is as high as they're willing to build the apartments, between safety and even ethereals not wanting to walk further. It's a good stone and brick building, not like the rickety wooden shacks of the poorer parts of the city, but I wouldn't build any higher with these materials. There's only so much you can do with period materials on the architectural front.

Down below, a man dressed in a navy business suit stands at the base of the apartments, coat slung over his arm in the early evening heat. Without him looking up, I can't make out any details, and facial recognition is a fuzzy thing to work on in the Marches where images are so mutable.

"Could be a demon," Fer says.

"Or an angel." I pick at the rough places on the wall. "Which is worse, I couldn't really say."

Ferro considers it for a moment. "Angels," it says. "They're so smug about killing people."

"You may have the right of it." I sigh, and step back. "Or maybe it's an ethereal who wants to speak with me for strange, ethereal reasons. Go let him know that he can come up if he brings a desk lamp and a way to power it. Otherwise, he can wait until morning."

Ferro rolls its eyes at me, as it climbs headfirst down the side of the wall. I return to my beer and waiting for sunset.

I paid the rent this morning, so when sunset comes the Essence isn't enough to take me up to full again. Nonetheless, the rush is as sweet as ever. It's how they hook you on the Word you serve: give you a Rite, and every time you support your Superior, you get a hit of Essence. Better than beer and barbecue. I was never good at the Rites of infernal Fire, which may explain why I'm able to slouch around being a Renegade without going through withdrawal symptoms. Demons aren't designed to run amok without supervision and slave-drivers and that addiction to the Words we serve, no matter that every one of us has a personal symphony that whispers our own perfection in our ears. I've suspected it could be accounted a personal flaw, my issues with authority: the natural habitat of a demon is beneath the boot of a more powerful demon, who's in turn beneath another, all the way up to the Lightbringer who, as far as I can tell, fought free of the tyranny of God so that he could set up the exact same circumstances for everyone else. Which implies it's celestials who are designed to be servants, no matter how far we run, and that means this problem with authority is a manufacturer's defect on my part.

All this mental maundering fails to find a point, but it keeps me occupied as the balcony turns dark and lamps in windows across the city light up. The temples along the ridge glow the brightest from all the gold inlay. Precious metals are as easy to dream up as mud in the Marches.

No one's tried to kill me in over a year, not counting that one bar fight during the festival. This doesn't mean I've abandoned caution. When the door to the balcony opens, I'm looking that way, not distracted by any lingering sunset out over the endless river. (And I do mean endless; in this Domain, it can't be crossed, no matter how far out you sail. No exit from the Domain in that direction, please move along.)

The man has to stoop to get through the low doorway without bumping his head. Up close, his tidy suit shows the dust that accrues on anyone passing through the city streets on foot, and his tie isn't quite straight. Tall, thin, and a face I know, if one I haven't seen in over a year. 

"Penny. It's been a while. Did you bring a desk lamp?"

He nods to me, and sits down in the chair across from me at the little table, briefcase clanking on the floor where he sets it. "Less than two years. I wouldn't call that long." Once the briefcase is open, he takes out a heavy flashlight, and presents it to me. I feel silly about the matter, but it's better than any light source I have at the moment.

"It's all a matter of perspective." Sometimes I forget that, as celestials go, I'm ridiculously young to be tangled up in this sort of thing. Two years represents multiple percentage points of my life. I flick on the flashlight, set it on the table where it can shine a light across the balcony. "What brings you here today?" I can guess: someone working for the Archangel of War has come across a project that needs plausible deniability, demolitions, and/or a Calabite, and I fit the bill. I haven't done work for them in some time, but those angels aren't the sort to leave me alone. Not permanently.

Penny frowns at me, though I don't think he's angry; it's more of a thoughtful expression, as if he has to figure out how to say something unpleasant. You'd think he'd be better at saying unpleasant things by now, given his Choir. But before he can speak, Ferro stalks through the door to eye us both suspiciously. "You know him, Leo?"

"One could say that." I lean back to grab another bottle of beer from where they sit in a shaded box of cool water. It can't keep them better than lukewarm during the middle of the day. "Fer, meet Peniel, Seraph of Trade. He doesn't mind if you call him Penny. Penny, this is Ferro, a friend of mine."

Penny turns his gaze on the ethereal. "Your true name?"

Ferro bares its sharp teeth back at him. "No." And slams the door on its way back into the apartment.

I pass Penny a beer. "It's a little touchy around angels," I say. "Can't blame it for that."

The Seraph nods, as if he understands how an ethereal might feel about the Heavenly Host. Given how much time angels spent slaughtering ethereals, in the Marches and on Earth alike, maybe he does. "You look different than when I saw you before," he observes.

"Oh, this." On such a pleasant day, I'm in my anachronistic outfit, brown corduroy pants and a shirt made from local linen. My own dreamed-up image isn't exactly that of my true form, though. Who wants to run around with horns and ragged wings? If nothing else, it creeps the locals out. "This image is based on my first vessel. I liked it better than the second one." My current vessel makes me look too harmless, too much like a kindergarten teacher. Useful, but not my style. The older vessel is something more nondescript, no one you'd look at twice on the street. And because this is an image of the Marches, all my clothes are crisp and my hair's in order. The instant I get back to the corporeal I'll be as scruffy as always, but I can enjoy the cleanliness here while it lasts.

"That would explain it," Penny says. He turns the beer around in his hands for a moment, then takes a swig. The following shudder almost makes me giggle. I'm easily amused. However, I'm also polite to guests who have never been otherwise to me, so I stick to a mild smile. "What do they _make_ this from?" he demands, staring at the bottle.

"It's ethereal beer. Ethereal plants, I expect. You'd think they'd just dream it up wholesale, but apparently recreating the land for the souls of the dead to wander through means you create it all, down to the long, slow, processes used to make everything from cloth to tombs." I lean over to grab the bottle back, and concentrate for a moment. Dreamshaping isn't that hard, though I'm no expert at it. "Try that."

Penny takes a more cautious sip from the bottle I've returned to him. "Not as...unpleasant."

"If you want good beer, you'll have to ask someone who knows how to make it." Dreaming it back into something that tastes more like the cheap corner store beer on Earth is as much as I can do on a whim. I save my Essence for more important matters. "So, what brings you here? Another contract from War? Because I'm on vacation, so I'm not really in the mood for that right now. Ask again in a decade."

"I haven't been sent by War," Penny says. He sets his beer down on the floor, and carefully slides the hounds and jackals board across the table until there's enough room to open his briefcase there.

I lift an eyebrow at Penny. It's a handy gesture I've picked up from the priest of Bast who comes by every week to ask why I haven't acquired a cat-figment yet. "Trade wants me specifically, now?" I can think of a few circumstances under which Trade might want the benefits of a Renegade demon working for them, but most would be better filled by, say, a Free Lilim with a thing for Malakim who'll trade service for photos of the Archangel Laurence.

"It's complicated," Penny says. As he's a Seraph, that means it is. Bad sign.

I sigh, and drink my beer, and take my time choosing my next move in the game with Fer. Penny waits with the patience of an angel who's at least twice my age, and probably ten times that. Which means he's not going anywhere. "So how did you find me?"

"Not through War's usual methods." I'm not surprised; Sean holds his tracking method close to his chest, and I'm grateful for that. I'd rather not have anyone else following the same route.

"That's not much of answer." I spread my hands. "Come on, Penny, you know why I'd be concerned about this issue. Give me enough information that I'm not worried you have the Game three steps behind you."

Penny regards me evenly. "I investigated," he says. "I am a Seraph. It took me five days to gather enough information to know which Domain to search. Once I arrived here, it wasn't difficult to ask after your location."

There's a wealth of vague left in the investigation step, but I doubt I'll get more information out of him on it. One more reason to avoid annoying Heaven--well, more seriously--is their handy information-gathering resonances. The best way to fool a Seraph is to never encounter him in the first place. "And now here you are. What have you come looking for this time?"

"Your help."

"I could have guessed that much from you showing up. People approach me because they want something out of me or because they want to kill me, and you don't strike me as having the latter errand in mind." I'm not ruling out the possibility.

Penny shuffles through the papers in his briefcase. "You don't believe I could come for more benign reasons?"

I settle for the response of, "Such as?" It barely manages to beat out "Not really," but now I'm curious.

"Theoretically speaking? I could want to pass on useful information, or take a vacation, or ask you out to dinner."

I choke on my beer. It's a good thing I don't really need to breathe in this realm, but I still need to cough a while before I can answer. "I thought we weren't going to talk about what I said that one time." The one time I got completely sloshed in front of someone else, which I don't do, but too much Creationer beer, a Seraph who can hold his alcohol surprisingly well, and sudden safety from danger can do that to me.

"You went on at length about not wanting to talk about it," Penny responds archly. "I never made any promises."

How do Seraphim do it? You'd think that with the need to stick to the truth, they'd be at a serious disadvantage in conversations, but somehow they talk circles around me and find loopholes I never would have known existed. I suppose if you deal with the truth all the time you get better at avoiding its sharp edges. "Are you?"

"Am I what?"

Now I know he's doing it to annoy me. In the nicest way possible, of course; it's simple Penny's polite way of saying I should stop harassing him about his motivations and let him put out his proposal. "Never mind. Tell me, what do you need my help with?"

"It's...complicated."

I take another swig of beer. "You keep saying that, and I like it less each time. So unless the situation is going to be improved by ignoring it for a while, let's get to the point."

Penny shuts his briefcase again. I think he uses it as a security blanket, playing with papers to calm his own nerves. I do the same thing with burning cigarettes. "Katherine's missing."

I blink at him like an idiot while trying to work this through. "And this is my problem how? Last I checked she was at a Flowers Tether with a Cherub attuned to her and a Seraph hanging off her like a conjoined twin. If they can't find an nine-year-old who's stayed out too late--"

"She's ten," Penny says. "Ling and Perle are both in Trauma. I haven't heard back from Iris with updates yet, and he can't do much searching personally."

I set my beer bottle aside carefully, then indulge in cursing in Helltongue for a minute until I feel better. Penny looks pained throughout, but he's the one who's trying to drop this problem in my lap, so he can live with a little offense to his sensibilities.

"Perle should have noticed when her attuned was in danger," I say.

"She was killed first. While she was leaving the grocery store," Penny says. "No witness has mentioned seeing the shooter. Preliminary autopsy suggested a high-powered rifle--"

"Okay, okay, I get the picture." The sick feeling in my stomach isn't from the beer, it's from putting together the pieces I've been trying to ignore.

It was a good plan. Take out the Cherub first, so that there's no warning of danger to her attuned. Seraph of Flowers next, to avoid problems with violence; their attunement keeps them safe from violence in close quarters, but a sniper can find a vantage point and take someone out from blocks away.

It wasn't an original plan. Anyone working for a violent Word could've come up with it easily. So the fact that someone followed my plan does not make me culpable. I only happened to point out the obvious solution to a particular Balseraph of the War who was complaining about having a Seraph of Flowers in the city.

It's not my problem.

"What does Flowers intend to do about it? They're the ones losing vessels and kids all over the place." I finish my drink, and return the bottle to the line of empties waiting for the next cask of beer delivered. "They're the ones with an Archangel sitting around, allied Servitors all over the place. As compared to, let's say, me, lone Calabite with a few reasons not to go back to the corporeal plane. You could've saved yourself a trip."

"Is the phrase 'limited resources' sufficient, or do I need to draw you a diagram?" Penny's accent turns clipped at the ends when he's annoyed, something I've seldom had opportunity to observe. "Flowers doesn't have proof of who took her--"

"Don't give me that, Penny. You and I both know who'd be interested in running off with a kid of no great talents and a great deal of potential backup."

"Supposition isn't proof."

"Once is accident, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action." My ex-girlfriend used to love quoting that to me, usually while we were trying to avoid being shot by someone. "Katherine disappearing, either of those two angels getting shot, I'd believe as some coincidence of hostility directed at Flowers. All three in succession means someone who's out for Katherine and knows what the situation is at that Tether. Do you have any good reason to believe Regan wasn't behind this?"

"No confirmation," Penny says, and fiddles with his briefcase as if it'll solve his problems if it's petted enough. "But it seems...likely."

"Which means she's doing this to get at me."

"Probably."

I take a deep breath, and count to ten in the local language, which I haven't much bothered to learn as everyone who's anyone in this Domain carries a token of Maat for translation purposes. This takes me several seconds. "So, if it's a trap designed to draw me out... Why, for the love of shiny metal lighters, would I walk in?"

"I don't expect you to walk straight in," Penny replies. "I expect you to come up with a clever plan that'll get Katherine out safely."

"No." I stand up, pace over to the balcony wall where I can look down on the smaller houses, over the estate of an ethereal who's paid me a small fortune to design him the perfect tomb, to the Nile that rolls black and endless at the edge of this Domain. "She has a Cherub, and it's that angel's God-given responsibility to track down her own attuned and take care of the problem. Not mine. It's not my responsibility, it's not my problem, and I'm not putting myself in danger for some kid I happened to drag around with me for a while."

"You don't care?"

"It's not my problem."

Penny stands up, elegant and angular, and walks over to where I'm leaning on the balcony. "That's not what I asked."

I flick a dead leaf that's been carried here by night winds off the balcony, and watch it drift down. "No. I don't care."

"Liar."

That's the problem with Seraphim, in a nutshell. I ignore his attempts to catch my gaze. "So what? I'm a demon. We tell lies. It comes with the territory. We are selfish bastards who don't give a damn about anyone who isn't us. In our most generous moments we get attached to people who are useful or friendly or say what we want to hear. Selflessly throwing ourselves into mortal danger for a chance at rescuing someone we might have once liked, not so much."

"You're more than your nature," Penny says, which means he must believe it. "You can choose to act against those things."

"I can. I choose not to." The wind is picking up as the air cools. Off in the distance, where tombs line up in neat rows for the poor or stand alone in splendor for the rich, I can see lights winking out as late-returning spirits close their tomb doors behind them. "Did you really expect I'd fall over myself rushing to save her? I did enough of that the last time around. Heaven's turn now. The problem belongs to the Host, and they can decide if they have enough resources to allocate any to one kid. They're the ones who claim to care."

Penny spreads one hand across the stone wall, long pale fingers against the rock. It reminds me of Regan. "You care--"

"But I'm good at being in denial about my personal problems, so if I keep telling myself I don't, after a while it'll go away." A dead leaf swirls up by me, and I swipe it out of the air. It gives me something to crumble between my fingers. "Since you know _anyway_ , sure, I'll be honest. It bothers me that Regan ran off with the kid. But you know what? There are a lot of things in life that bother me, and I've learned to live with them, because it's better than being _dead_."

Penny watches the leaf turn into dust, that blows away from my fingers. "I thought," he says, "that if I came in person to ask, you might be more inclined to agree."

"It doesn't work that way. If you want a personal appeal to hold some power, there has to be an actual connection, and you don't get an actual connection when two people occasionally run into each other for the purpose of ensuring contracts are binding. Why should I care what you think about all this?" I glare up at him. My vessel was shorter than his, and now so is my image. It's hard to glare when you have to aim it six inches up. "Why should _you_ care?"

"I'm an angel," Penny says. At my snort, he adds, "And I serve a Mercurian Archangel, which means I'm more likely concerned about the affairs of humans than some others of my Choir. Despite all the damage you did in the time you cared for her, I think the relationship was good for you."

That stung. "I took good care of that kid."

"You taught her to set things on fire, shoot a gun, and break whatever was in reach when she was frustrated."

"It was Regan who taught her how to shoot. And for a kid living with demons, those are valuable life skills." The night gets cold fast here, and I'm shivering in the wind. "Look, I'm sorry about what happened. Ling was a sweetheart, even if she was a lunatic with the cognitive abilities of a horned toad, and much as I disliked Perle, I wouldn't wish Trauma on her. But I'm not going to get myself killed over feeling sort of bad." I turn to go dig up a jacket, and find myself presented with Penny's coat, offered on one hand. As if the cold around here _matters_.

"I believe you have the capability of coming out of this alive," Penny says. "I wouldn't ask the help if I believed it would only get you killed."

I take the jacket, pull it on. The sleeves hang too long around my wrists. "Your faith in me is touching, Penny, but I think my acceptable risk to reward ratio's different than yours. It was nice seeing you again. Sorry you wasted the time."

Penny tilts a hand, non-committal. "I can wait."

"I'm not going to change my mind, and you have more important things to do."

"Nonetheless." He looks down at me, polite and resolute and arrogant as only Seraphim can be. Balseraphs get close, but they seldom manage the polite part.

I have no idea how long he's willing to stay here and try to convince me. "Fine," I say. "I'm heading out for the night, and I'll be back by morning. Feel free to have another beer, though I'll warn you they're all like the first one. My home is your home, et cetera and so forth. If Fer tries to give you grief, just ignore it and it'll sulk somewhere else for a while."

Inside the apartment, Fer's gone out again. I carry the flashlight in, use it to locate the oil lamps sitting on either sides of the main room. The sparks I use to light them are only brief, weak dreams, but dream fire is enough to set dream oil alight. Penny follows me inside, wordlessly takes his coat back when I hand it over and pull on my own jacket. "Night only lasts a few hours here. I suppose they find it boring to sit around in the tombs playing I'm A Dead Spirit until dawn. If for some reason I'm not back by morning, try not to scare the kid who comes by with breakfast. It's sort of a local tradition, so play along as best you can."

"Where are you going?" Penny asks, but he does me the courtesy of waiting in the room and not following me to the front door.

I give him a grin over my shoulder, nothing that reaches my eyes. "I'm going to throw rocks at crocodiles."


	2. In Which I Throw Rocks At Crocodiles

The river stretches smooth and still before me in a way real rivers never do, endless ahead of me and endless to either side. From the outside, this Domain is the size of a small city. The Marches are like that.

You might wonder why a city with a river that binds one side and goes nowhere would bother having docks. I certainly did, and asked the locals until I realized I was never going to get any answer better than "Because that's how it works." I follow the bank down to one of the docks, the one where quarry rock is loaded into boats. The economy of materials here is all show, figments repeating actions that have meaning on Earth where you can't dream rock up out of nothing. Skill and Essence and service are the only things one can make real deals of in the Marches, those and the rare talismans or reliquaries that pass through.

The ground around this dock is littered with stone chips. I pick up a handful, then go striding to the water's edge. It's a moment's dreaming to turn a chip into a proper rock. Then it's only a matter of walking down along the river until I come to place where crocodiles drift in the water, pretending to be a series of bumpy logs.

I chuck a rock at the nearest crocodile.

It bounces off scaly hide, splashes into the water. Two more rocks, and the faux-log finally moves, swaying toward me with the lazy grace of a predator that knows it can outrun me for short distances and outfight me underwater.

Wide jaws open in front of me. I throw a rock into the crocodile's mouth. "Go tell the old bastard Leo wants to talk to him," I say, as the crocodile snaps its mouth shut and gives me a reproachful look. "Don't look at me like that, you're only a figment."

It slouches off into the water, and I wait at the still, smooth bank of the river, tossing rocks at any crocodile that comes too near.

Half an hour passes before the water begins to churn, as the old man himself makes an approach. The other crocodiles splash away in respect or fear: it's hard to tell the difference in figments of reptiles, underwater, at night. As for Sobek, he rears up, spreading jaws wide enough for me to step inside without ducking my head, his jaw sliding across the soft mud towards my feet.

"I abhor the eastern land, I will not enter the place of destruction, none shall bring me offerings of what the gods detest, because I pass pure into the midst of the Milky Way, one to whom the Lord of All granted his power on that day when the Two Lands were united in the presence of the Lord of All Things." I finish off with a perfunctory bow. "Good evening, Lord of the Crocodiles."

Sobek snaps his jaws shut, so close I catch a whiff of rotten fish and roast pork as his teeth flash by me. "Technically," he says, "it doesn't apply to you."

"I know."

"I mean, pure? You're a demon. I wouldn't call that pure."

"It's been mentioned."

"And if you think the Lord of All granted you anything--"

"We've been over this, Sobek."

The crocodile whuffs out a sigh that sends a series of waves splashing over my sandaled feet. "However, the rules being what they are, I suppose I won't eat you. What do you want?"

"Hey, if I'm interrupting your busy evening schedule, please, don't let me bother you. I wouldn't dream of keeping you from your duties." I sketch out a bow, and take a step back to give my feet a chance to dry off. "Lord of the Crocodiles."

Beady reptilian eyes narrow at me. "You're an asshole, you know that?"

"It's been mentioned. And you're the recreated not-quite-god who, according to the most recent Egyptian mythology, shouldn't even exist as a separate entity. Much less take the time to chat with people like me. Yet here you are." I fold my arms. "So what's up with the unexpected visitor?"

Sobek rolls over, sending massive waves in either direction to wash the figment crocodiles further away. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Let me narrow it down a little. Seraph, happened to wander in today looking for me, somehow managed to cross the Nile into this Domain to do so. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Nile your area of patrol? Did you not claim, quote, I know all things that touch the waters of this river, from the merest mosquito to the greatest ship, unquote?" Sobek hiccups, and my ankles are now wet as well. "I mean, what have you been busy doing, eating gods' hearts again?"

"I haven't eaten the heart of anyone important in centuries," Sobek mutters. "And I'm quite aware of anyone who comes across this river. I noticed that one."

This has been a night of controlling my temper. I continue to do so, though perhaps the rocks in my hands crumble into fine powder under my resonance. "Let's think back a little further, then. To the issues you were having with your temple. Those traps you wanted in case someone should happen to want to steal the gold inside. Why anyone would steal ethereal gold is beyond me, but they're not going to manage it now, with the traps built in there. If I recall, and please tell me if I'm wrong, the _agreement_ was that you'd watch the borders for unwelcome visitors, and keep them out. Or at least let me know if they were coming. Which wasn't any trouble at all for the Lord of the Crocodiles, who knows all things that touch the waters of this river, et cetera, ad nauseam."

"Look," says Sobek, heaving his body forward a few yards in a lunge that splashes hard enough to be heard up on the temple ridge. "I may not be much of a god, but I have what powers I claim, and I've kept my end of the bargain. That angel came in without any malice towards you in his heart, and trust me, I know from malicious hearts. If you're not happy about an old boyfriend showing up, that's not _my_ problem."

"He's not an old boyfriend! He's some Seraph who thinks if he talks to me in a sufficiently firm yet encouraging voice I'll repent of my wicked ways, save the damsel in distress, and turn to the side of the light." That came off whinier than I intended. I stuff my hands in jacket pockets.

"Well, will you?"

"Will I what?"

Sobek rolls its eyes at me, though it's hard to tell in the dark. "Repent of your wicked ways, save the damsel in distress, turn to the side of the light."

"I wasn't planning on it."

"Then why are you the one down here yelling at me instead of him? Ignore him and he'll go away, that's what I always say." Sobek yawns toothily at me, giving me another blast of crocodile breath. "Or if you can bite his head off. He's not local, no one's going to care."

"I don't go for the head-biting."

"You should start. I find it refreshing. But stay away from the hearts. Those always lead to trouble. Distraught wives, coughing it up to be weighed against a feather, and then they complain about how it doesn't balance because I didn't cough up enough, or included too much saliva... Not worth the trouble, trust me."

Talking to the crocodile god has been about as much help as I expected, which is to say, none at all. On the positive side, I've now worked off some stress. "You're a font of wisdom, Sobek."

"Don't get lippy with me, demon. I stick to talking about what I know, and what I know, I know. Angels aren't in my jurisdiction. You want to know about fish, we can have a chat." He slides back into the water, leaving a long groove in the mud from where his jaw rested. "Now, unless you have any important matters to discuss, I have a dawn sacrifice to catch at my temple. I think today is lamb. I like sheep. The wool is so cuddly on the tongue."

"Now there's a tactile concept I could've gone my entire life without." The short night is starting to gray, as the sun prepares to rise from the same place where it set, beyond the endless Nile. "Thank you for the time, Lord of the Crocodiles. And I apologize for any inadvertent insult to your honor."

"No you don't," Sobek says agreeably, pulling further back into the water. "You meant every word of it. Now get off the banks of the river before some of my servants decide to have a snack."

I make my way damply back towards the dock, and by the time I look over my shoulder the water's gone still, all the crocodiles back to floating about like harmless really not going to eat you logs.

The walk back to the apartment takes longer than it should, mostly due to two wrong turns on the way. The little alleyways between shacks are impossible to remember properly, and more so when I'm distracted. I pass the girl who delivers breakfast on the stairs up to my apartment, and grab my own portion on the way. She has a charming smile and blank eyes. Only a figment, and not even a native one; she followed the landlord from another Domain, and adapted to the local culture. The blond hair is out of place around here, but I find it reassuring. I'm not the only expatriate in this city.

Penny stands on the balcony, resting his arms on the wall as he looks over the city. It is a good view; there's a reason I'm paying so much every month in rent. "Breakfast," I say, and pass him the second roll. "Did Fer come back last night?"

"Not that I noticed." Penny blinks down at what I've given him. "This...appears to be a croissant."

"That it is."

"I thought you said it was a local custom."

"Imported custom, now local." I prop my elbows on the wall and lean out beside him, the wind dying as the morning turns hotter. "At first glance, this city is traditional. Classic architecture, the old language, ethereals mimicking the routines of humans from millennia ago. Look closer, and you notice the little gods springing up where the old ones died and left gaps, the locals who aren't so local, the way it's not so much historically accurate as accurate to what the media shows people. It's the Marches. Everything changes."

"Endlessly mutable," Penny says, and takes a bite out of his croissant.

"Change or die. It's how it works for ethereals. If you can't keep up with ways to garner Essence, you start to fade." I point to the rows of tombs, off to the side of the temples. "See all those doors opening? Those are ethereals pretending to be the spirits of the dead, stepping out with the sun from their tombs into a new day. Some of them might even be dreamshades. The concept of death is so tied into the culture that these ethereals in the city will design tombs for themselves, then go through the whole ceremony of death, preparation, burial, and wandering about playing at being human souls. It's not an ethereal image of the afterlife, it's an ethereal image of the whole society, because the culture combined the two so thoroughly. Can't have the afterlife without having the life for the spirits to wander through."

"I don't see any ethereals coming out of the doors," Penny says, squinting against the dawn light.

"Well, of course not. We're still playing the life game. The people who are alive aren't supposed to be able to see the ones that are dead. Otherwise it would get too crowded." I sit down at the table, pull my croissant apart into soft shreds. Breakfast is more fun to play with than eat. "I design tombs for people here. Do you know what all these ethereals planning their own funerals and mock deaths want? Traditional Egyptian design? No, they want something like those movies and games, with clever puzzles involving jumping and pushing blocks and running from giant stones."

Penny takes a seat across from me. "What do you think about that?"

"What of it? I can design a rolling stone track if that's what they're willing to pay for. I like it here. It's just...interesting, is all."

"You do like it here." A note of surprise to his voice.

"Is that so shocking? I can look like what I want. No one tells me what to do, so long as I'm polite and stay within the laws. I have a career of sorts. No one's tried to kill me since I arrived, one bar fight aside. It's a little dull, but compared to the alternative? I can take dull." My croissant is now a pile of greasy fragments. I dissolve them into goo, then dust, and let the last of the morning breeze blow them away. 

"I don't find it surprising that you'd choose personal comfort over danger."

"Nice try, but I can't take offense at being accused of pragmatism." I wipe my hands on my pants, and look up at the firm-yet-encouraging expression on his face. "Look. It's a pity, it is, but you don't even know the kid. Why go to all this trouble to track me down? If you care that much, why don't _you_ try for the rescue attempt?"

"I don't believe I could do it myself," Penny says. "And it's true, the child is, mm, outside my jurisdiction, as it were."

I fold my arms and lean back. "...but?"

"But you are not. As one who's dealt with you in the past, and who has on occasion spoken on your behalf, I consider myself in some small way responsible for you."

I review his words a few times over. "And by speaking on my behalf, you don't just mean negotiating contracts, do you? You mean, say, telling someone they shouldn't kill me because I'm useful."

"For one reason or another. Yes." He gives me a long, slow blink, the kind Balseraphs and Seraphim use when their vessels--or images--don't quite match their true six-eyed forms.

"If you wanted to call in a debt, you could have just said so."

"I'm not a Lilim. I don't require that others pay debts when they weren't aware they were being made debtors."

"Right." I watch the lazy ascent of the sun over the Nile. It'll take its own sweet time rising, with a twenty-hour day waiting for it to slide through the sky. "And if I don't come with you now, you're going to have less reason to tell people I'm a trustworthy sort who shouldn't be unduly hassled."

Penny sits very straight. "I am not trying to threaten you." Every word sounds as if it's been cut off with a blade. He's full of a Seraphic anger I haven't seen before. Not unlike Regan when she's been mortally offended, but where she would be stabbing someone by now, he only...sits straight, and makes his point clear.

I sigh, and look over the board of hounds and jackals. Ferro's been across the balcony at some point while Penny was inside, because it's my move again. "I'm sorry, Penny. Of course you aren't."

After a long moment, the Seraph says, "I should not be surprised that you'd expect such tactics. Given your past experiences with some angels."

I move a piece, and don't look him in the eye. "I've done dangerous things because I was forced into them, or tricked into them, or needed something I could only get that way, or sometimes because I was being paid for it. It's not often someone asks me to jump into danger on the basis of my better nature. I'm not sure I have a better nature."

"Better than some demons." He sounds so earnest when he says this.

He's not going to let this drop. I look up at Penny. "I'm not a good person."

"Of course not. If you were, you would have already agreed to come." He finishes off his own breakfast, polite and in accordance with local customs down to the last bit of bread. "I can't justify trying to rescue Katherine myself. I'm not a Servitor of Flowers, and as you said, I've had little contact with the child. There's not reason to justify the risk of an attempt by myself."

"I haven't seen her in almost two years. She was just some random kid who happened to be _useful_." A precocious brat who could start fires without rattling the Symphony, someone I could order around when I was sick of taking orders from Regan. Someone who needed me. The lingering sentiment's a trick of the mind, a byproduct of my own possessive nature.

Wait a minute. Rewind, replay. Seraphim are imprecise only so far as they mean to be in their language.

"By yourself? Are you saying that if I actually walk into this trap like an idiot, you'll come with me?"

Penny nods briskly. "That was my intention."

"Are you _insane_?"

"Not so far as I'm aware." He plays with his briefcase, flipping through the papers inside. "Does this mean you're reconsidering your decision?"

"Reconsidering your common sense, maybe." I stand up, move over to the edge of the balcony. Down below, Ferro stands in the street, looking up. Waiting for me to tell it the big bad Seraph is gone. "I need to talk to some people. I'll be back in a few hours. I mean, assuming you haven't left by then."

"It's unlikely." Penny lets me leave, patient in a way I wouldn't have expected a Seraph to be, and I walk downstairs letting my common sense argue with my less reasonable urges in the back of my mind.


	3. An Interlude, In Which Ethereals Are Weird

Ferro walked down the street on bare feet, little human-shaped feet, no matter that this was the Marches where it ought to be able to look however it wanted. "You shouldn't go."

"You're entirely right. I shouldn't." Leo moved beside him with the comfortable gait of a creature that was used to bipedal movement, found the two legs natural and not worth thinking about. "If I wait another week, there'll be one more tomb waiting for my designs. I'm as safe here as I'm going to get anywhere."

"You're going to, aren't you?" Ferro found itself stumbling on the rough spots of the street, had to remember not to turn to tires and treads and steel claws.

"Why do you say that?" Leo looked down, amused and confident. Never trust a confident demon. Never trust a demon at all. They're bound to break you in the end, one way or another.

"That's why we're walking together. You say that you're leaving. I protest that it's not safe. You give me the option of staying. You leave with no guilt for me being behind, because it's my choice." Ferro chewed on its fingernails, wished for the taste of rubber and iron and glass. "If you go, you might not come back. I won't wait for you here."

"Who said I was going?" A sharp tone in Leo's voice. Ferro welcomed it for the stray, skittish thing it was, ready to flee back into false cheer.

"You don't need to say it. I know it. It's just like with Nik. Every time someone gets too close, you get rid of them."

"That's not true." The sharpness was still there, still something Ferro could curl up around and hold tight. "She was taking dissonance too often. I had to send her away before it got any worse."

Ferro walked beside Leo on two silly little feet and said, "You sent Nik away. You sent that human away before, I heard about that. You left Regan, and I think you loved her. Now you're trying to get rid of me."

"I'm not trying to get rid of you. I haven't even decided if I'm going yet." The sharpness was all gone now, only leaving a rust-dulled tired behind it. Ferro opened its hands, but they were only ordinary human-looking palms, no scratch on them from what it had held.

"You're going. If you weren't, you'd say you weren't, not that you hadn't decided." Ferro meant to say, you shouldn't trust angels, they're as bad as demons, but couldn't find any way to put it that a demon would listen to. "It's okay. I don't even like you that much. It's not in my nature to love anything that isn't a machine."

Leo chuckled. "Is that supposed to be comforting? If so, you're not very good at it."

"I might not even remember you, if you're gone long enough," Ferro said. It opened and closed its hands, but there were still no scratches. Maybe the voice hadn't been sharp enough. Maybe it hadn't held on tight enough. "I've forgotten other things before."

"I don't intend to abandon you, Fer." Like a little rust-red sharpness, to hear its name so short like that. Ferro wanted to paint the word and take it home to hang from a rearview mirror, where it could huddle with others of its kind, happy and lucky. Leo stopped, looked down, so annoyed but with such a soft, no-edges voice. "Once I take care of this, I'll be back. I mean, assuming I don't die in the process." He stopped, a little engine hiccup. "I really am going to be an idiot and go after her, aren't I? I suppose there's no reason to break the pattern of stupid decisions on my part now, when they've done so much for me before."

"It's okay," Ferro said, and nearly touched the demon's hand. "You're made of squishy bits. You do things like this."

"It's such a bad idea," Leo said. "I'm going to regret it."

"I'll be sorry if you end up dead," Ferro said. "You showed me interesting things, and gave me cars to play with. It's okay if you need to leave. I know it means you like me."

Leo sighed. "You're a strange one, Fer."

Ferro smiled, feeling its teeth sharp against its tongue. "You're the demon in the Marches, walking through a city of ethereals, who all pretend to be humans. Who's the strange one here?"

They walked the rest of the way without talking, but that was okay. There was a little sharp piece of Leo's voice tucked inside Ferro's hands where no one could see, safe and waiting forever and ever, or until it forget about the demon entirely.


	4. In Which Reputations Attempt To Precede Us

The Domain I've been living in believes in Newtonian physics, which isn't standard within the Marches. If you let go of something in midair it drops, thrown objects describe arcs in the air, and an object at rest does remain at rest until it's punted into the Nile. I consider this a plus: there'd be no call for architects if the whole city flexed as easily to the mind as the open Marches. However, it gets somewhat arcane on the subject of entrances and exits.

There's one way into the city: across the Nile, which Sobek claims to guard. Given that he let me in here, his judgment can't be that great, but there haven't been any invasions since I arrived. There's also one exit, and it's not across the river, which stretches endlessly if you try to sail out. The single exit of this entire Domain lies inside a shop that sells cheap magical scrolls, in a store room that's only reached by walking through the proprietor's apartments in the back, through a courtyard with a vegetable garden and chickens, and down beneath a shrine to various deceased household cats. (The cats in question are still around, but being honorably deceased, they no longer feel it's their place to do anything but laze about in the tomb and look dignified.)

"It's a spell for turning yourself into a lotus blossom," explains the man--ethereal or dreamshade, I'm not sure which--while Penny shifts restlessly behind me. I've managed to get us inside the store, but we haven't yet hit the courtyard. "Essential for any man after death."

"I wasn't planning on dying," I say, though it's a looming possibility for the days ahead. "Could we possibly have access to the exit? I need to go."

"Why would you want to transform yourself into a lotus blossom?" Penny asks, before I can warn him not to interrupt, and that turns into a ten-minute explanation of the benefits of shape-shifting when in the land of the dead.

My patience has already worn thin, so I interrupt sooner than is polite. "Tell you what," I say, moving between Penny and the animated proprietor with his demonstration scroll. "If you let us through to the exit, then should I ever decide to die while in this realm, I promise to get all of my burial scrolls from you."

The man stops, and considers the offer. "My cousin is an embalmer..."

"And if he ever acquires a Domain exit in his basement, I may well speak to him about that." Why a house built by a regularly-flooding river has a basement I couldn't say. The Marches are full of mysteries, and that's not a sufficiently interesting one to inspire active curiosity on the matter. "I apologize for the rush." I give him my nicest smile, and resist the urge to brandish a flame in front of all the stacks of dry parchment. The local gods become irate when you set their city on fire.

Twenty minutes later, we've hit the door in the back of the storage room. As befits a one-way portal in the land of dreams, it's a swirly glowing surface full of sparkles in colors that don't exist in the real world. It's also blocked by a stack of beer barrels, requiring another few minutes to move those out of the way.

"Do people not leave here often?" Penny asks, as we slide the last barrel aside. He's not too Most Holy to do physical work. Well, technically speaking, mental work, but menial in either case. I have to think better of any Seraph willing to roll up his sleeves and shove heavy items around for practical purposes.

"Not very. Most of the locals came here to settle down somewhere quiet and out of the way. There's not a lot of incentive to travel." I take out the scroll we were finally talked into buying, and chuck it through the portal. The otherworldly colors resolve themselves into an ordinary wooden door. "What do you know, it works like he said."

Penny eyes the door dubiously, then pushes it open. Beyond, gray mist and silver sand stretch in front of us. "Do you know the way to the Tether you mentioned?"

"I haven't been there since I first hit the Marches, but I can find it again." I follow Penny through the door. Sand shifts beneath my feet as I step out of the Domain, and a moment later the door's gone again, leaving us standing in a misty stretch of dunes. "If you're anxious, you can jump back to your vessel and wait for me to get in touch with you once I reach the corporeal."

"It's an option, but I'd prefer to stay close. The Marches can be dangerous." Penny sets his briefcase down in the soft sands, and his chosen image, same as the vessel I've seen him in half a dozen times, flows away around him. "I had an escort on the way to Heliopolis, though she had to leave for other duties once I hit the Nile. You'll be safer having a companion on the trip." He's taking on what must be his true form, though I've only seen that once before, a single moment in a Tether before he pulled on a vessel.

The fact of the matter is, I'm a sucker for Balseraphs. They're entirely inhuman, as a celestial really ought to be, without the bestiality of Djinn or nauseating goo of Shedim. Lilim, Impudites, Habbalah, even Calabim, we're all shoddy variations on human form, nothing much to look in Hell. Balseraphs, though, full of arrogance and inhuman twisty minds, look the part of proper demons. My ex-girlfriend has dark green scales, matching leather wings, six eyes that can convince me I've done something wrong even if I'm not sure what. Beautiful. Small Balseraphs are cute, darling little winged snakes dreaming of greater futures. 

So now I know Seraphim are equally good-looking. Penny's scales are ripples of gold and copper, his six eyes are gold-flecked amber, and his wings hold feathers of dark leather brown. Breath-taking, not that I need to breathe here. He stretches out a wing towards me. "Is something the matter?"

I shake off the idiot stare I acquired during the change of images, and shrug. The appearance of my first vessel is enough to suit me. "Nothing beyond the obvious. Let's get moving."

Penny's eyes tell me he reads more into it than that, but he's the soul of courtesy, and doesn't make an issue of my very small lie.

It takes me three hours to get together my bearings enough to point us in the right direction, and Penny suffers patiently through all the meandering, though occasionally his feathers ruffle up at the delay. Now there's body language Balseraphs don't have. I wonder if when the first Balseraph fell, he found feathers too telling to want to keep them. 

Ruffled feathers aside, I track down the path, and set off at a pace fast enough to suit even an impatient Seraph. "You can stop fluffing now, really," I say, and grin at Penny's glare. That expression looks exactly the same on a Seraph as a Balseraph. "Look at it this way. Regan's obviously been planning, so any window of opportunity to act before she was ready for me passed in the first few hours. We might as well take our time." The yellow brick road passes merrily beneath our feet--well, my feet, his coils--as we move away from the emerald city I spotted. The natives there don't take kindly to visitors, but it's a good landmark. landmark. "I could try to provide entertainment for the trip. Are you interested in hearing the Heliopolis gossip?"

"Not very." Penny drifts through the air, an occasional coil dragging along the road below. "Though I do wonder how their economy works. They seemed to be engaged in production with no use for what was produced, and no avenues of trade with the outside."

"It's a faux economy. The real economy is in exchange of Essence and talismans and service, but this is the Marches, and so the appearance of an Earthly economics system is obligatory for the feel of things. They cut rock and grow figs and fish in the rivers because it's what's done in Heliopolis, not because there's a market for any bit of dreamed-up material." I kick a piece of broken brick out of our way, and it bounces through the soft green grass until it stops in a heap of silver sand. Boundaries can be odd, here. "Or so I parse it. I took one class in economics, and that was some time ago. There's only so much I retain from the lectures."

"I always found economics fascinating, though I specialized in more prosaic matters of Trade," Penny says serenely. One would expect as much from a Seraph of Trade. "Business negotiations, contracts, and so forth. Still, the overarching theories are fascinating."

"Maybe to you. I used to do my British Lit reading during economics class." I watch the monkeys swirl by overhead, keeping an eye on us. Their feathers are mangier than Penny's, as if someone stitched their wings together. "I only took the class because it was a non-lab science that fit my schedule." Or, more precisely, fit Regan's schedule: by sophomore year she was decreeing when I would be free to suit her, and I played along so that I could make my own demands in return. Nostalgia makes those idle college days more attractive than they deserve to be; I can remember the childish power struggles with Regan and flammable pranks, while ignoring the part where the Habbalite Seneschal I worked for liked to run me through a new set of emotions every weekend. "Did you ever go through college on Earth?"

"Not yet. I've held Roles with college diplomas attached, but spending four or more years in classes never seemed an efficient use of my time." Penny shrugs, a long ripple along his length. "My Choir tends to have a harder time holding down Roles anyway. I don't consider it a loss to not have one. When I'm needed, they call for me, and the rest of the time I can spend at home on work, study, and personal matters."

I don't think I ever want to see Hell again. There's no way now it could be good for me. But I still get a small stab of jealousy, to think of how he can flit between the corporeal and celestial as casually as that, jaunt through the ethereal when it's convenient, while I have to jump through hoops to move between any two planes. "I'm amazed Seraphim can manage Roles at all. How do you deal with the constant subterfuge?"

"Carefully," Penny says. "Very carefully." He smiles, a thin snaky smile that makes him look smug, just like a Balseraph. "I could ask you the same question."

"I'm not the one who gets hit with dissonance at every lie I tell."

"You're not bad at telling the truth."

What an odd thing to say. I suppose from a Seraph, that's a compliment. "That's because it's easier to keep the facts straight when sticking to the truth. And sometimes I'm in the company of people who'd know if I lied."

Six eyes arch at me. "Do you spend much time with Seraphim?"

"Well. Not often. But it's still easier to keep track of the truth than a cover story, when it's an option." The brick road is turning more broken, missing large patches of paving. The monkeys above have dropped down, in preparation for the walk through the woods. "You might want to put on a more appropriate image for this part. It makes passage easier."

"You don't seem to be dressed appropriately," Penny says.

"Yes, but I've been through here like this before, politely enough that I'm hoping it'll help again. You're looking distinctly..." I search for a polite way to put it. "...angelic."

"That's because I am an angel."

"And we all know how much most ethereals love those."

Penny's feathers fluff at the edges, but he only says, "Is this place basing its images on the movie or the books?"

"Pick your favorite."

The Seraph concentrates visibly, and then a new image flows around him, until he's a ragged-maned lion loping along at my side. A somewhat more dignified look than a man in a lion costume. I grin down at him, having finally regained the height advantage. "Cherubic tendencies?"

"Even if I had them," Penny says sharply, "I'd be allowed to bite you."

I take the hint, subtle as a Seraph's hints ever are, and don't bother him about it further.

The trees of the deep, dark woods don't stretch more than a hundred meters on either side of us, but this place doesn't care what's behind the plywood stands. There's a certain level of play-acting here, zippers peeking out from costumes and lines being said with the full knowledge that they're lines. They took too much from the movie; I liked the Oz of the books better.

When we pass through the woods, the branches rustle threateningly overhead, but it's only threat. Penny's cowardly lion impression is unimpressive; he strides through as if he owns the place, tail lashing behind him. I wear a little more deference in my attitude, in case someone might take offense.

On the far side of the woods stands the house, still crash-landed from its Kansas trip, though it stands in grass that grows out of silver sand. I know there are more defenses than either of us can see, but it looks lonely and unprotected, a battered little house at the edge of the Domain. "I could have guessed as much," Penny says, and looks up at me. "Is this the Tether?"

The lonely aspect disappears as the flying monkeys land on the roof, two dozen furry faces glaring at us. "That it is. Let's been on our best behavior, because we're asking a favor they aren't obliged to grant."

"I'm not unversed in matters of negotiation."

"With ethereals?" I give the monkeys a jaunty wave, and step up to knock on the front door, ignoring the legs and feet sticking out from under the house. They're only set dressing.

The creature who finally opens the door has a pumpkin for a head, blank and uncarved, and a body made of knobby branches that creak when they bend. "You're back," it says. "We thought you said you were only passing through the once."

"Plans change. May we come in?" I school my face into something sincere, trustworthy, charming. "I'm willing to pay the same price as last time, for each of us."

Pumpkin-head turns to examine each of us in turn, though I'm not sure what good it does to swivel an eyeless head around. "You did enough for us before to get through on a fair price," it declares. "But we don't know your companion."

"He's a friend of mine. Can I vouch for his good behavior?" I turn up the charm. "We're in something of a hurry. I wouldn't be bothering you otherwise."

The ethereal's having none of this. "Noise and attention, for strangers? We won't speak of such a travesty." Its head bobs up and down on a stick neck, ludicrous in contrast to its lofty tone. "We need better assurances than that."

"And haven't I always kept to my side of the bargain before?" It's an effort to keep the irritation from showing in my voice. I spent a month keeping the Seneschal on the other end happy before I was allowed the use of this Tether the first time, and you'd think that would count for something. "Look, it's not as if the locus is somewhere disturbance would be easily overheard, and there won't be much difference between one and two people going down in such a short period of time."

"And yet, we don't know your companion. Would he keep our secrets?"

"Of course," I say, before Penny can answer. He fixes me with an amber glare that I pointedly ignore. I'm entirely willing to lie through my teeth on behalf of the Seraph who can't. "You can take it up with me if you find out otherwise, not that you will."

Penny rears up to rest heavy paws on my shoulders, and murmurs in my ear, "He'd be satisfied with three Essence from you, all of mine, and to know my name and nature. This may be problematic."

I've never been taught what Servitors of Trade can do, beyond keeping their promises and holding people to contracts. So now I know one more thing. "You go ahead and drive the deal, if you're so eager," I mutter back to the Seraph.

Penny drops down to all fours, shakes his mane. "Three from each of us would be the fair price," he says. "Isn't that the standard?"

"The standard for those we know," retorts the pumpkin-head. "We don't know you."

"You may call me Penny," says the Seraph, neatly avoiding the tell-tale signs of an angel (or a Habbalite, most confused of all demons) in his true name. "I'm an acquaintance of this one, having met a few years back and assisted him in a few matters on the corporeal. I've kept every confidence I promised to keep, in these dealings with him, and held to my part of each contract." He pauses for a precisely calculated length of time. "If this is enough of an introduction, may you consider yourself to know me as well as you need?"

"Anyone could say that," says the ethereal, but it's wavering in its firm stance. "We've only now met."

"There must be a first time for every meeting," Penny replies, serene as ever. "Is there an additional fee for new users of the Tether?"

"There is," rattles the ethereal quickly, and even without facial features there's hunger to be read in its posture. The blank pumpkin swivels between the two of us. "All your Essence, and to swear that you're no enemy to us. We do not think," it adds, "that such a one as _him_ would accompany the butchers of Heaven or the servants of Nightmares."

Penny draws himself up to a grand leonine glare. "Do I look like a Servitor of Uriel? Do you see any black wings, or swords, or attempts to purge creatures of dreams from their homes?"

"...ah," says the pumpkin-head. "No, no, they're not given to subterfuge. All your Essence, then, and the three from him, the standard arrangement." It holds the door of the house open for us, and a hand of twigs starting to leaf for the payment. "Will you be back?"

"I plan on it," I say. "But you know how plans can change." I pass over my three Essence, and before I step through the door, say, "Standard fee for him next time, right?"

"It may be the case," the ethereal responds, and then I move into the Tether.

I've never used a Tether up to the celestial in my life. The ones to Heaven for obvious reasons, the ones to Hell because my Discord won't let me. The last time I used this one, it was an act of will to climb to the ethereal plane, painful and syrupy the whole way. It's someone's idea of a joke (and by "someone" I mean the Prince who made me this way) that a demon, native to the celestial plane, should find getting off the corporeal plane so difficult.

Back to the corporeal is much easier. My vessel settles around me like a heavy jacket that hasn't quite dried from a walk in the rain, clammy and heavy. Disturbance hiccups out from the Tether, then again as Penny appears beside me. His vessel looks exactly as his image did when he came to my apartment, if a little less dusty and sans briefcase.

"Interesting," he says.

There may be a wealth of subtle differences between the feelings of traveling celestial and ethereal Tethers. I'm too concerned with pulling on the vessel Bound to me to notice. "You can tell me about it later." Say, when the Seneschal, dressed perfectly for the role of Auntie Em, isn't peering at us from her place in the farmhouse. I don't think she's going to offer me apple pie this time around. Pity; we built up something of a rapport last time.

Penny takes the hint, and only nods to the Seneschal before following me outside to the bleak stretches of flat land around the house. "Kansas? I should have guessed."

"There's no place like home." I set off towards the main road. "Are you going to object if I steal a car? Because I don't have enough ID to rent one."

"I can rent a car at the next opportunity." Penny follows along briskly enough, though I catch the glum look at how his shoes pick up a fine coating of dust. "We can reach the Flowers Tether within a day once we've acquired a car. From there, we can attempt to pick up the trail."

"We'll need to make a stop along the way." The prospect is enough to put a bitter smile on my face. "I need to pick up supplies."

"The Tether--"

"Is unlikely to stock what I need. I'll explain later."

We stroll on through the hot midday sun, dust drifting around our feet.

"Nice dodge on the angel question," I tell him.

"You needn't sound so astonished. You've done as much yourself."

"I'm not the Seraph." I kick a clod of dirt out of the way, watch it bounce a few times and crumble against a fence post. "I mean, do they give Evading Awkward Questions classes to auditoriums full of little baby Seraphim?"

"Not auditoriums," Penny replies, with as much dignity as he can gather around himself. Being a Seraph, that's quite a lot.

"Classrooms?"

"...the class wasn't actually named _that_."

"But for an English translation of what it was called in angelic, I'm not far off, am I?"

Penny sighs, and rolls his eyes. "No. Not very."


	5. An Interlude, In Which I Have Better Things To Do Than Talk

They arrived at the Tether in the dark hours of the morning, made darker by the cold of the season. It seemed to Penny that something could be said about Leo always coming to this place in the winter, when all the gardens were quiet and dull, but he couldn't think of any way to bring it up. The Calabite had grown quieter the closer they'd driven, until, on getting out of the car to stand in front of the gates, he only stared blankly, arms wrapped around himself.

"Iris is expecting us," Penny said. He stepped forward and hit the buzzer. Leo nodded, followed, said nothing. "Do you have any plans yet?"

"Some," Leo said, perfect Truth and nothing Penny could get beyond that.

The woman who came to the gate was no one Penny recognized. She wore brown leather, moved less like a deer and more like a wolf. Her eyes were a dark green, like leaves trapped in shadows. "You're early," she said, not opening the gate.

"I let him drive," Penny said, unsure if that counted as an explanation. He hadn't felt willing to tell the Calabite to drive more slowly. "Will you let us in?"

"Wouldn't know he was a demon," she said, with a jerk of her chin towards Leo. "Not from looking at him. Or into him. Tell me, do you think that makes a difference? Or is it only a matter of not seeing far enough?"

"I think I'd like to speak with the Seneschal," Penny said, and met her gaze until she opened the gate.

He fought the urge to pull his jacket around himself as they walked to the house. The night was cold, but nothing so cold as to affect an angel's vessel. It was only information, low-priority information, when he should be paying attention to other matters. Penny allowed himself a small sigh, barely audible, and kept himself between demon and angel. He had dealt with more difficult, more dangerous, more tragic situations before. The cold was trying to drag him into depression, frustration, all these _distractions_ , the weather providing too accurate a mirror of the blank, cold look in the demon's eyes.

A mistake, though, to treat the weather as if it had volition. (Putting aside the actions of the more elemental Archangels.) He kept his pace and face as even as any Elohite might, until they were inside the house, the green-eyed woman falling away to stand by the door. Penny caught a glimpse of something dark and solid beneath her coat when she leaned over to close the door. "He'll meet you shortly," she said. "We weren't expecting you for another hour."

"We can wait." Penny tucked his hands in his pockets, found he was copying Leo's gesture.

She looked from the Seraph to the Calabite. "I suppose you can, at this point." And frowned as Leo went walking away, but made no move to stop him.

Penny shrugged, apologetic, as the demon disappeared into the kitchen. "He has been here before."

"Makes himself right at home." She put out a hand. "Briar Rose, Virtue of Flowers. I am glad you came, even with...company. It's not your problem to worry over." That could have been a challenge, but she meant it as a question.

"Peniel, Seraph of Trade. Feel free to call me Penny." It had worried him, for a time, how easily the nickname settled on him. A few conversations with an Elohite had settled that matter two centuries ago, but these days he was wondering again about the wisdom of accepting a...variation on truth, if one wanted to call it that. Some days he introduced himself by the nickname first. 

His fingers fumbled across a lighter in his pocket, souvenir of the one stop they'd made along the way. ("I'd prefer you didn't smoke in the car," Penny said, and Leo grinned at him, a brittle, sharp expression, passed across the lighter. "There," said the demon. "If you change your mind, give it back.") A solid, ordinary, corporeal object. A reminder that philosophical meanderings weren't appropriate right now. Focus on reality, leave the theoretical for other times.

"Have you known him for long?" the Malakite asked, jerking her chin towards the kitchen doorway.

"It depends on how you define knowing a person."   
That earned him a dry chuckle. "English. Gotta hate it. When did you meet him?"

"A few years back." He sorted all the confidential information from what could be given freely. "It was another matter the missing child was involved in."

"That whole business with the War, yeah. I heard about it." She took to pacing around him like an Ofanite, shoes making no sound on the age-polished wooden floors. "It wouldn't be hard, you know. To keep him somewhere safe after all of this is done, assuming he comes out alive. Tell him the truth until he understands it."

"It has long been our agreement that I wouldn't hold him after our contracts were over," Penny said. "Our first agreement was explicit on this point."

"Have you promised it this time around?" Eyes like a tiger, though Penny hadn't seen a tiger outside of Heaven in centuries. "Or was it only implied?"

"Are you trying to argue contract loopholes with a Servitor of Trade?" He meant to be quelling, but she laughed, and shook her head.

"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right," she sing-songed. "Choir and Word mean I have practice in approaching problems from different angles. There's more than one solution to nearly any problem you're faced with, and the obvious one isn't always the best."

"I'm well aware of this principle."

"Then I'll leave you to your awareness, Most Holy." She sketched him a bow that carried an insult her previous words hadn't, and stalked upstairs, two steps at a time.

Penny found an apology caught in his mouth, but he couldn't put the words in a corporeal language before she'd disappeared around the first landing. He sighed again, too aware of tensions in a place of peace, then walked to the kitchen.

Leo sat at the table, a bottle of beer half-drunk in front of him and no cap in sight, only a fine metal dust near the demon's hands. Penny took a seat across from him. "What do you think?"

"There's a saying about barn doors and houses." Leo took another drink from the bottle, face blank and eyes aiming somewhere beyond the walls.

"I wasn't referring to the Malakite."

Leo's eyes refocused on Penny, and his expression returned to something more polite, friendly, engaged. Less honest. "I hate coming back to this place. It always struck me as unfair, you know. That angelic Tethers can scorch a demon's soul, and the worst a demonic Tether can do to an angel is give them a queasy sensation."

"Do you expect God to be fair?" Penny asked. He wanted this answer, wanted to pick apart its insides and hold them up to discover more answers hidden beneath the guts of the response. But Leo only shrugged, returned to drinking his beer.

Penny waited in the silence for Iris to come. He was a Seraph, and thus not responsible for small talk. Apparently no one had given Leo the memo about other celestials having the responsibility to provide suitable conversation during quiet, awkward moments.

The Seneschal stepped into the kitchen after twenty minutes of painful silence. Leo had already finished the bottle of beer and reduced the glass to a powder swept wordlessly into a trash can. "Iris," Penny said, and stood up. "It's good to see you, though I wish the circumstances were different."

"Don't we all." The Mercurian took a seat at the table. He looked much like a human who hadn't been getting enough sleep; rumpled, tired, older than his vessel's supposed years. "I see you managed to drag him back here after all. Eventually."

"Most of the delay came from tracking him down," Penny said, and waited for Leo to object to being spoken about as if he weren't present.

Iris nodded, folded large hands together on the tabletop. "If I seem abrupt," he says, "please forgive me. It's been a long week. I'm grateful for the potential help."

"I wouldn't be back if I didn't mean to get the job done," Leo said. "An artifact that can track her from something she owned, and a look at her room. That's all I need here."

"There are more resources available than that," Iris said. "We have our own--"

"It's all I need," Leo repeated, and stood up. "Not my business what else you're doing about the problem, is it?"

The Seneschal's expression barely changed. All the extremes had been worn out in the last week, and he only said, "I have an artifact of that sort in storage. I'll get it for you, though I would like it back afterward. Penny, would you show him Katherine's room?"

It wasn't until the top of the first set of stairs that Leo said, "You've visited?"

"After you dropped out of contact." Penny nodded to the Malakite as they passed, received only fractional acknowledgement. That seemed fair. "I stopped by to see if you'd left any message with Katherine about where you'd gone." He found that Leo had fallen behind, following where the Seraph couldn't read his face anymore. "She asked if I knew when you'd be coming back."

"What did you tell her?"

"That I didn't know." It wouldn't have been truth to say never, not without having any way to be sure.

The room was larger than a child needed to herself, as messy as one might expect from a destruction-prone fifth-grade girl, and all the walls covered with Ling's drawings. Fanciful drawings, to an unaware mortal: detailed studies of weeds had been taped up alongside pictures of relievers and Cherubim, Ofanim whirling at the feet of Mercurians and blessed souls drifting through the skies in the background.

Leo stood in the doorway for a moment. Penny moved inside to give the demon room to pass. "We may need to test a few items before we find one suitable for tracking..."

Leo shook his head, and finally moved out of the doorway, boots crunching over discarded toys and clothing. He ignored the bookshelves and the toy box, to crouch down beside the bed. A moment of fishing about underneath, and he pulled out a stuffed backpack. "This will do."

Penny looked more closely, and could see nothing exceptional about a rather old bookbag. "You think she's attached to her schoolbooks?"

"It's everything she cares about most," Leo said. "And a change of clothing." He stood up, slinging the backpack over his shoulder, and gave Penny an odd smile. "She was always packed. Just in case I came back."


	6. In Which Overconfidence Pays Off

Penny's been dying to ask where we're going since we left the Flowers Tether, and I'm being petty by staying quiet until he asks out loud. I didn't want this responsibility, which means I'm touchier than usual about people questioning my plans. I'm also touchier than usual because what plans I've made are pathetic enough that I'd be embarrassed to explain them.

Hey, Penny, how about dying? How do you feel about that? There's no graceful way to ask that. So I've been driving with both hands on the wheel, ignoring his hopeful, curious silence from the seat next to me. Katherine's backpack sits in the trunk, a reproachful itch in the back of my mind. I'm out of practice in not thinking about things. Too much time sitting on my balcony sketching out tomb designs and chatting about nothing of consequence has given me bad habits, cured me of all my cultivated abilities to be in selective denial.

Let's face the simple facts: I'm a Calabite on a rescue mission. Destruction trying to bring about salvation. This can't end well.

But there's a broad range between total success and total failure, so I'll do my best to stake my claim somewhere far from the latter. It's madness, I know it is, but what's a demon without self-delusions? I need to get back into practice, convincing myself that what I know is a lie could be true. Balseraphs are better at it, but it shouldn't be hard. The procedure comes naturally to my kind.

"Aren't you going to try tracking her?" Penny asks.

"It took you six hours to come up with that?" Which reminds me to check the tanks, and aim for the next exit advertising gas. One of the advantages to traveling with a Servitor of Trade: they _always_ have a high-limit credit card on them.

"You seemed to be set on silence. I didn't want to interrupt trivially." He leaves the question, don't you think you're being childish, entirely implied. How civil of him.

"Then, in answer. No. Not yet. I have to pick up a few things first, so I'm not going to waste the Essence on tracking a position that might change before I can follow it." Though Regan's unlikely to move Katherine around often--my ex-girlfriend _wants_ me to find her, and it's easier to fortify a single position than several in a row--but knowing a direction will only annoy me.

"You're planning on acquiring equipment before knowing the situation?" Penny's trying to frame his criticism politely, but the skepticism shines right through.

"We're talking about a Servitor of the War. Any situation Regan's organized will involve locked doors, sentries, and heavy weaponry. Beyond that is details." In this vessel, a bullet between the eyes will send me off to Limbo, no matter what type of weapon is being used to send it through me. "The expectation is that I'll be so thoroughly outgunned, I'll have no choice but to try to talk my way through. My strength against hers, as it were." I pull up to the pumps, and find myself reacquiring a grin I haven't pulled out since I got to the Marches. It's the one that shows up when I'm planning something dangerous.

"But you're not going to." Penny frowns at me, making no move towards getting out to fill the tank.

"No. I'm not. It's the obvious approach, which means Regan's expecting it. It's not like I can outgun her. This time, she's ready for whatever clever plan I come up with." I open my door, and step out. "I'm going to see if they have a pay phone. Would you take care of the gas?"

Ten minutes later, the tank is full and I've established that the gas station doesn't have a pay phone. I make my way back to the car, take the driver's seat again. Penny asks, "Problems?"

"I'm pondering the wisdom of showing up without calling ahead." There are advantages to having the element of surprise, but I'm not sure they apply when trying to make nice. On the other hand, not calling ahead means a lower chance of having the wrong people waiting when I arrive. "I'll deal. Let's get going."

"Who are we going to see?" Penny pulls on his seatbelt, and looks faintly concerned at me until I do the same.

"Someone who owes me a favor." It's the best description I can come up with that's unlikely to send Penny grabbing for the wheel. Assuming he's not already reading more truth in that.

But apparently he isn't, because he only frowns and says, "You're not certain of that."

"I believe she owes me a favor, but I'm not sure she'll agree. I guess we get to find out." I flash Penny a smile he won't believe. "Don't worry about it. She hasn't tried to kill me yet."

Not personally.

In the spirit of not ending this road trip in annoyance-driven stabbing, I ask Penny a few leading questions about economics, and spend the rest of the drive keeping half my attention on the road and the rest on the lecture about the relative merits of various systems of distribution of wealth and resources.

"Don't talk," I say, when we pull into the parking lot. "Or if you absolutely must, try not to say anything incriminating."

Penny surveys the battered warehouse with a dubious expression. "What would you define as incriminating, under the circumstances?"

"...on second thought, let's go back to the option where you don't say anything. Though if you could let me know in a reasonably discreet manner if someone is lying, that would be handy." Not that I mean to imply Penny is a conveniently self-transporting lie detector, but...he is. His other fine qualities aside.

"I'll see what I can do," Penny says, and follows me to the back door. I wasn't expecting more of a promise than that.

For once, I get a lucky break: not only is the warehouse still in operation, the human who answers the door doesn't recognize me, but does know what I mean when I ask to speak with Al. If she had moved while I was gone, tracking her would take longer than it was worth.

When they let us into the warehouse, Penny and I walk down long aisles of stacked crates with no one shooting at us and no more than a brief, incurious glance from a man doing inventory with a clipboard in hand. The layout hasn't changed since I was here last; there aren't that many efficient ways to arrange large crates of explosive contraband in the space. Penny stays silent during the discussion it takes with Al's secretary before we can step into the office, though the looks he's giving the place are about what I'd expect from a Servitor of Animals who just stepped into a slaughterhouse. You'd think that Trade would be in favor of an efficiently-run business, even considering the merchandise.

Then we're walking into the office of someone I can't really describe as an old friend. I put on my most confident grin, the cocky one that would do a Balseraph proud. "Al. Long time no see. How's business been?"

The double-take coming from Penny and Al at the same time is priceless; I wish I had a recording of that. I don't think dear Abigail was expecting me to walk in here again after the way we last parted company. Penny's reaction is the usual one of someone seeing Al for the first time. You don't get many Calabim with visibly inhuman Discord running around on Earth. I, for one, think that the greens and blues of her skin and hair are nearly as pretty as Balseraph scales, and the iridescent pearl look to her nails and teeth are stunning.

But she's good, Abigail is, and a moment later she's as composed as ever, at almost the same moment that Penny's face no longer expresses any surprise. I wonder if they're about the same age. That's reflex, right there. I may be clever, but I don't have the useful habits of a centuries-old celestial who's had time to practice these responses. "Leo," she says, eyes narrowed slightly. In case it's someone in a look-alike vessel, sent to dig out hints of treason. "I shouldn't be surprised that you lived through that, but I'm surprised that you're _here_."

"Working for the War now, aren't you?" I drop into one of the chairs in front of her desk, put on my best cocky grin. Demons and angels, they're like dogs: they sense fear. But only a few can do that literally, so the rest pick up on the little cues that give you away. I've worked for Habbalah often enough to be good at shoving those little signs into the back of my head and not letting them show. "I mean, I could say the Game, but I expect they handed you back to their good friends, since you have this nice little setup with the connections and everything. I imagine business even balanced out; lose a few regular customers to the agents of order lurking in the lobby, gain new customers coming straight from the War, expense accounts at the ready. If you have to cut a deal with the Game, well, cut the best one you can, and you have cut one sweet deal from a bad bargaining standpoint. I admire that."

"We all do the best we can." Good reflexes, good acting skills, but not quite good enough. She'd like to reach disdainful, but she's only achieved blank with a touch of irate. I've shown up when I'm supposed to be dead or hiding, with friends when I should be friendless and shunned by anyone in their right mind.

We're all a little crazy, us demons. Choose your flavor: solipsist, psychopath, obsessive paranoid pathological liars. Right now she's trying to figure out my flavor of crazy, and the list of flavors that justify my presence here aren't saying anything good. If I pushed, I could probably get her to play nice, try for something conciliatory. I'm not that much of a bastard. And, weirdly enough, I'd rather she not hate me at the end. Funny how these priorities work out. So instead of giving off the signals that scream danger, I'm going for...confidence. Dazzling, charming confidence. She can't afford to call my bluff.

"I think you owe me." Penny takes a seat beside me, before I need to kick him in the ankle to draw his attention to the other chair. He sits up straight, fixing the Calabite across the desk with a stare that has the force of all six celestial eyes behind it. I slide down in my chair, resist the urge to put my feet up on the desk. There's such a thing as taking the act too far. Lazy smile, hands behind my head, every little sign that means, you can't hurt me.

"I kept my part of the contract," Al says. "Payment for product. There was nothing more to it than that."

"True, true." I speak quickly to cover Penny's barely suppressed snarl. I think the Seraph of Trade might quibble. "The part where you don't tell other parties about your current customers was only implicit. Wait, I mean, _explicit_ , except not in the contract itself. It wouldn't make sense for a weapons dealer with a reputation at stake to start selling out her customers. Bad for business, bad for one's health..."

"As you noticed, business has continued." And dear sweet Abigail's arch look says, are you going to take the threat from the realm of possibility to actuality?

No, I'm not. The more I leave certain things fuzzy, the more room I have to maneuver. "Convenient, that. You'd have a hard time filling my shopping list otherwise." I produce the list I made. As one might expect of anything I've been carrying close to m, it's grimy and battered. Not so much that it's not legible. I drop the paper on her desk. "I'm not too picky. Approximations will do if they're readily available. I'd like to be out of here within the hour."

"You want to buy this from me?" She's regained her footing in the conversation; that's a stock intonation of indignant reproach. Type to knock her off again.

"No. That would be stupid of me. Since you're working for people who want my head on a stake--eventually, that is, I expect they'd have a whole preshow lined up by now--you're not going to do business with me." I slouch further in my seat, still grinning. "I expect you to give me what's on that list for free."

It's as good as the first double-take. She manages to suppress her reflexive comment, and doesn't speak until she can manage, "Why would I do that?"

"I can think of a few reasons. Because deep down you're a good person who regrets what you did to me. For the tax write-off as charity. To express your displeasure with being leashed to the War after so many years of freedom. So that you can give the people I intend to harass not only news of my approach, but a complete list of what I'm packing." I pull a cigarette out, dig a lighter out of another pocket. "Or maybe you'll do it because you owe me."

"I had no choice in the matter." I didn't expect her to admit that. Suspected as much; play with Lilim too often, and you'll end up geased into doing something you'd rather not. It's how they work.

"Humans don't have any choice in needing to eat, but they still have to pay the grocery bills." I hold the lit cigarette out far enough that the ash will fall onto the concrete floor, not the chair or my lap. "Look, Al. We're both demons. A certain amount of backstabbing is be expected, especially when Geases get involved. I feel everyone's justified one betrayal without there being hard feelings afterward, and all things considered, I'm not taking it personally. But the fact remains that it cost me when you sold me out. Fill this order for me now, and I'll consider us even."

A long silence, where all I can hear is the three of us breathing. I find it funny that we still need to breathe; a vessel can go without food or water or comfortable temperatures, not one of us needs sleep, but take away air and we'll keel over just like the humans. Maybe some day they'll work out that bug in the technology.

"I have a customer arriving in three hours," Al says. "I need you out by then. I can cover two thirds of this from stock on hand, and that's it."

"I'm in a hurry. I'll take what I can get." I put out the cigarette in my palm before it can drip ash anywhere, and remember when fire used to never hurt me. "Did I ever tell you you're amazing, Al?"

"Once," she says, a little tight-lipped smile, and stands up. "Let's get to work."

Penny rolls up his sleeves when it's time to pry open crates, right beside the human minions Al has around to do grunt work. That's enough to get him another one of those subtle appraising glances from her. She's reading him wrong, and I'm not sure how much of that is deliberate on his part. I smile and joke and do my share of the lifting, and make sure everything is packed into the car where it won't tumble around. It takes us most of an hour to get loaded, and no time for serious conversation. Just like we wanted it.

In retrospect, it was a relief to be betrayed by a new friend. With old friends it hurts more, and with strangers it's easier to be angry. But Abigail and I only knew each other a few days, got along too well, went our own ways. I can shrug it off. In a similar position, I would have done the same.

She comes as far as the warehouse door, the one that leads to that airlock of a room between outside and inside. "Don't come back," she says.

"I wasn't planning on it." She expects a charming smile, the sort an actual Servitor of Theft might use, so I don't disappoint her. "Are you going to tell on me?"

"Maybe," she says. "Maybe not. You'll just have to find out."

I lean forward to kiss her. It's an imposition, and I shouldn't, but she tastes like good beer and slightly of sweat, so how can I resist? We're too much like humans, she and I. We should all be so lucky as to be Seraphim and Balseraphs. They look at the black and white of things, and don't get tangled up in stupid crossed loyalties.

"You're so good with surprises," I tell her. "I can't wait to find out."


	7. An Interlude, In Which Some Questions Remain Unanswered

"Well?"

Penny blinked, and looked up from the gun in his hands. There was something peculiar about the make, though he wasn't sufficiently familiar with weaponry to pinpoint the details. "Well, what?"

"Will she or won't she?" Leo had taken his eyes off the road for a moment, and gestured emphatically with a lit cigarette. "Don't tell me you weren't resonating. Much as I'm willing to fake a devil-may-care attitude about my future mortality, I'd like to know if they're going to be expecting me, or expecting me to show with an ally and a sizable quantity of explosives."

Penny lifted his hand in the air, and tilted it one way, then the other. "Maybe. Maybe not."

"You didn't get a reading?"

"I received a clear reading. There's the truth of it. Maybe she'll tell them. Maybe she won't. I'm not a fortune-teller, I'm a Seraph. When a demon speaks her intentions honestly, that's what I get, not what she'll decide two hours from now."

"Huh." Leo turned back to the road, cigarette tapping out the window in a series of sparks. "See, I was hoping she'd be sufficiently swayed by my innate charm that she'd cover for me. She'll have to answer for the inventory discrepancies."

"We'll find out the hard way if she does tell." Penny tucked the gun inside his jacket, to an inner pocket where it would be easy to reach. Heaven forbid they have to pass airport security on their trip.

"If she hasn't let them know by now, she probably won't. The longer she waits to contact them, the more guilty she looks, and she can't afford that." Leo frowned, cigarette dancing outside the window. "She can't afford to be in the situation I just put her in, no matter how she responds, but that's the way it goes. She'll deal. Al's a resourceful sort, and clever for a Calabite."

"It sounds as if you don't have a very high opinion of your own Band."

"Oh, I don't." Leo's voice had acquired that artificial cheer he pulled out whenever a conversation became uncomfortable, but not enough to inspire a change of subject. "By and large Calabim are built on the brute template, with exactly as much mind as required to point them in the right direction. Mindless destructive idiots, and the smart ones learn to fake it well enough that you can't tell the difference."

"Did you?" Penny admitted to himself that this was not a matter of carrying on polite conversation. The answer interested him, one more data point for an incomplete file.

"Unfortunately, no. I was only moderately clever. Not smart enough to realize I should have kept my head down. Spend a few more decades doing the grunt work in Hell... There are disadvantages to being a _promising_ young demon. They love throwing you into a corner where you'll get bored and resentful and proactive, to see if you'll do something worthwhile or take yourself out in a blaze of stupidity." The cigarette had been ignored too long, and Leo's hand jerked as the butt that had burned his fingers went flying away. "I suppose it's typical of all the Bands. We're programmed with self-destructive behaviors, and the ones who make it far are the ones who turn the programming into something useful. Did I ever tell you about Captain Savas? Now there's a credit to the name of Calabite. Vicious bastard. I'm glad to have a plane of existence between us."

"You mentioned him, yes." Over too many bottles of beer at the Flowers Tether, Leo drunk and nearly falling off his chair from a fit of giggles brought on by stress relief. Most of the file came from what had been said that night. Investigating the background of Renegade demons was inadvisable. "The Calabite of the War who was in charge of giving you and Regan orders?"

"That's the one. I still don't know what was up with some of those jobs. Idiotic on the surface, and they could've been part of some brilliant plan, or a test of our ability to muddle through the stupidity, or maybe as dumb as they looked." Leo lit another cigarette, no matter that he'd just been burned. It seemed a very demonic reaction. Repeating the same mistakes unto infinity. "Must say, Al's the one Calabite I've met who I really liked. Which makes it more of a pity that she screwed me over, but it's to be expected."

Penny wished he was driving, and chose not to say this. "When you walked in there, she was willing to give you what you wanted. For free." He'd only meant to get a price so that he could nudge Leo appropriately, and the result his attunement picked up was unexpected enough to override even his surprise at the demon's Discord. "How did you know?"

"I guessed," Leo said. "Took my chances. I figured that anyone as used to working for Free Lilim as she was would resent being leashed." It was an incomplete truth, but after a moment of silence, the demon went on. "We make our own systems of morality, to keep from going completely psycho. The War has its delusions of honor, Theft likes to play the dashing bandits, the Game has its endless rules and loopholes, and in Fire you never get burned by your own schemes. Nothing much from an angel's perspective, but you don't last two centuries on the corporeal without something to hang your identity on. Seemed like a good bet that she'd hate being pulled into betrayal of a contract. Either that, or she'd blame me for being the cause of her new situation, and I'd be dead as soon as I reached her office. I got lucky."

Penny nodded, and made notes in his mental file for transfer to the physical one as he had the opportunity. "I suppose you did."


	8. In Which Preparations Are Made

By the time I've made it to the mall Starbucks where we agreed to meet, the echoes of disturbance are starting to die down. Unsurprisingly, Penny looks twitchy and irate, even over his cup of coffee. I suggested the coffee shop on the principle that Traders could always be counted on to find the nearest source of caffeine, and because I figured Penny would need a strong drink by the time I returned. Looks like I was right. I grab myself a soda and take a seat across from Penny at the table in the back, private enough if we keep our voices down. "You look a little worried. Something up?"

Penny glares back at me, looking down his long nose with something almost approaching a sneer. It's adorable. Reminds me of Regan. "Whereas your expression brings to mind the proverbial cat and deceased canary. Is it safe to assume all that noise was your responsibility?"

"Yeah, pretty much." I stand up again, wait for him to collect his cup and follow. "Come on, we need to find a place with a television on before the news breaks. I gave them plenty of time to hit the six o'clock news, and plenty of daylight for footage."

Penny follows me through the mall, dodging squealing children and parents with strollers while drinking his coffee as elegantly as if he were still seated. "Are you going to explain any of this, or will I need to guess? I hope you have a good reason for making enough disturbance to alert anyone in the city."

"An excellent reason. It's a vital part of the plan." I consider my plan. "Okay, an _important_ part of the plan, which I probably could have worked around if I had a few more days to think about it, but I'm getting impatient and it's been years since I blew up anything impressive. Was the power flickering here?"

"What did you--" Penny lowers his voice, as we pass by another cluster of disaffected teenagers attempting to look nonchalant and full of disdain for the opinions of the world, in case anyone's looking at them. "What exactly did you blow up?"

"A power substation. Those make an incredible light show when you take them out. I regret not being there to see it, but if any of the camera crews were fast, they probably got some great clips of the tail end for tonight's news." I check my watch. "We're going to need to find a place to sit around for two hours or so. Noticed any restaurants in the area with televisions all over? I can't call in again until the news gets onto TV. Can't justify knowing about what happened when I'm supposedly a few hours out of the city."

"What, exactly, are you calling in about?" Penny asks. He takes the lead, out towards the parking lot and presumably on to a restaurant he's thought of. You can always count on a Servitor of Trade to know the good places in town for a quiet meeting between two people with business to discuss, and I'm sure he can narrow that down to restaurants with televisions if he thinks for a few minutes. He's had a few days to get to know the place while I've been running around acquiring blueprints and analyzing lines of sight.

"I'll tell you when we're in the car," I say, and give him a cocky grin that would infuriate some people I've worked with. Penny only rolls his eyes, and pulls out the keys.

Before I get into the car, I check the compass I've been letting Penny carry. I'd prefer to keep it with me, but I don't want to risk doing it harm by my presence. I'm not sure I _could_ harm an artifact's readings that way, but I'm not taking unnecessary chances. One needle on the compass points north: the other points to Katherine, with a little digital readout below giving a distance estimate to within a foot. No movement since the last reading: that wave of disturbance may have spooked the demons in town, but not enough to send them running. Good.

"I continue to not see the purpose of alerting your enemies to your presence," Penny says, once we're through the ticket booth at the exit to the mall. "Please, do explain."

"It's simple," I say. "We're not dealing with Theft or Death or Lust, here. We're dealing with the War. They have a fortified position and something to defend. We have a trunk full of explosives and heavy weaponry. There's simply no way to get in there that they haven't already considered and planned for. If I try it, I'm dead or captured."

"This makes things simple?"

"Sure." I pull out the disposable cell phone I picked up yesterday, and check to make sure it's functioning. "It means that I can cross a whole range of approaches off the list. It's stupid to pit my weaknesses against their strengths, and I'm sure Regan's taken precautions to make sure I can't use my usual tactics against them. Which leaves me with the option of turning their strengths into liabilities."

"I would be interested in hearing how you plan to do this," Penny says.

"I'm sure you would be. How are you with a sniper rifle? And a grenade launcher, though I can work without if you can't handle one of those. I could really use the sniper help, though. I'd prefer to stay in a position where I can show up as the concerned uncle looking for his poor kidnapped niece once the time is right."

"I can manage both, if you're not shooting at humans," Penny concedes, not happily. He doesn't like being cut out of this much of the plan, and if there were another day of this, he'd put his foot down about helping me without being in on the details. I don't intend to give him enough time to balk. "Do you intend to tell me who you're calling when the news breaks about the explosion, and why?"

It's a fair enough question, and he'll overhear the conversation anyway. "Approximately ten minutes before that power station went up in a pretty explosion," I say, "a man identifying himself as a member of The True Faithful of God called in claiming the city would be punished for its wickedness in cleansing flame. He called it in to, let me see, the local news station, two national news stations with crews in the area, and both of the major newspapers."

Penny nearly runs a stop sign. "You _what_?"

"Well, I needed to make sure they'd mention the group by name on the news broadcast," I say. "I figure that should be enough coverage to get it on air. As soon as it hits the airwaves, the local police are going to get a call from a concerned man who's heard of this previously unknown cult before. He was on the run from them with his niece, but they managed to track her down and kidnap her, and he's hoping this local group is the one with his poor lost kid who must be _so_ scared by now..."

"I'm torn," Penny says, carefully, "between admiration and terror. This is liable to become messy. And noisy."

"I can work with messy and noisy," I say. "It goes with the Band. But if I'm making Regan's little well-defended and heavily-armed enclave of minions into a liability for her, I damn well need to be sure anyone getting hostile in that direction is on the lookout for hostages."

"A sniper rifle doesn't sound like a method of letting other people handle the confrontation for you," Penny observes.

"Well. Balseraph. I can't risk Regan talking everyone down."

"Ah. Point." Penny is silent for a long moment. "There's one thing I don't follow," he says, "out of the small portion of the plan you're telling me."

"The grenade launcher?"

"No, that makes sense, so far as I understand your plan. I'm referring to the part where the supposed concerned uncle calls the police after hearing about the cult on the television broadcast. Wouldn't it be equally plausible to have been running regular searches for mention of the cult's name online, and to have noticed as soon as they posted the story to the newspaper's website? Those frequently go up before the news broadcasts."

"I...didn't think of that, actually."

"Ah."

"Look, I don't use computers much. And I want to wait for darkness, anyway." Is Penny smirking at me, or am I embarrassed about not having thought of that myself? "Maybe the theoretical uncle doesn't check his email every five minutes, unlike some people."

Penny makes a noncommittal noise. "It's not a good plan. But as I can't offer a better one, unless you're willing to take my suggestion from before--"

"It's still a better plan than trying to negotiate, Penny. I don't care if you do have experience in hostage negotiation. I'm not about to get loaded with Geases to get Katherine out. I'll risk my vessel if I have to, but not that."

Penny frowns, but only says, "You're sure Regan would have brought a Lilim along?"

"Of course she has." I've lost the thrill of making things go boom, and now I'm back to the twisting feeling of knowing I've started a fire that's liable to turn back and burn me. "If our positions were reversed, I would."


	9. An Interlude, In Which People Are Suspicious With Good Reason

Jack found Regan in the kitchen, feet propped on the table and a leather-bound copy of _The Art of War_ spread across her lap. She had enough sense to keep her back to the wall and the curtains drawn, but not enough to look up when he stepped through the doorway. He stepped around in front of her, and waited for the Balseraph to notice him, counting the seconds until she drew away enough attention to look up. Four seconds. Enough time for someone of similar appearance, unnoticed, to put a bullet through her head. Balseraphs came in two flavors, paranoid to the point of stupidity and overconfident to the point of stupidity. Apparently Regan was the latter.

"Is there a problem?" she asked, looking down her nose at him despite being seated.

Jack folded his arms. "Is there a problem? What, you don't think the disturbance earlier today was a problem? Everyone in the house is on edge."

"It's only a ploy to draw our attention," Regan said, and turned back to her book. "He thinks we'll run off and split our forces if he makes enough noise, or get spooked and do something stupid. Ignore it."

"Point the first, people _are_ getting spooked. Nearly two weeks of nothing, and then disturbance, and no followup. Point the second, if he keeps doing that, and we don't make a move to stop it, we're going to look less than stellar for not putting a stop to the disturbance." He waited for a response, and on getting none, said, "Spooked soldiers don't react well to new surprises. At this rate, we might end up with someone you wanted alive getting shot."

Regan sighed, and waved one hand at him. "You're the Impudite. Take care of things."

Jack did not say, you're the leader, lead. He turned and left the kitchen, hearing the turn of another page behind him. 

He found the Habbalite in the basement, staring at the panel of lights and fingers working through a chain of beads. "Nothing to report," the Punisher said. "Still nothing to report. Not a damn change on any of these. You're sure these are working?"

"It's a good system," Jack said. "If anyone tries to come in, we'll know." He ran his fingers across the top line of lights. "Constant signals. If they cut the wires, we stop getting the signal, and the alarm goes. If they don't cut the wires and open so much as a mail slot, the alarm goes."

"A good system. Right." The Habbalite turned the chain of beads around in his hand, starting back from the other end. "Good enough that you couldn't break into it?"

Jack did not say that he couldn't design a system he couldn't break. "Yeah, pretty much. Even if this guy's been picking up training from Theft, we'll be fine."

"Right," the Habbalite said, and stared at the panel. "Fine."

Jack frowned over at the other demon. "You holding up okay?"

"I'm _fine_." A snap to the voice, and the Habbalite straightened up, nearly at attention. "Everything's under control, and as you say, we'll have warning if anyone tries to make a move on our defenses."

"Good," Jack said, and smiled amiably. The Balseraph in charge may have taken the leadership tactic of complete disdain for everyone under her authority, but he didn't have enough trust from these people to do the same. "Just keep on watching, and we'll be ready." Let them remember the second in command as the one who paid attention, kept in touch with the details, listened to their concerns. It couldn't hurt.

The Lilim sat in the living room, bent over glossy magazines that she turned carefully with long fingernails, while her other hand lay spread to let the polish on those nails dry. Jack made sure his footsteps were loud enough that he wasn't sneaking up on her, a courtesy she wouldn't notice.

"Two weeks," she said, when he stepped into the room. "I am so fucking bored."

"Not quite two weeks." He took a seat at the other end of the couch. "And since your contract was for a month, it looks like you might be in luck."

"What, does all that noise mean I get to do my part and leave soon?" She spread her nails in front of her for a critical study. "The sooner the better. I thought Earth duty would be _fun_. But I've been stuck in this stupid building the whole time. How am I supposed to build up any Geases?"

"It's a challenge to your inherent ingenuity," Jack says. She stared blankly at him. He didn't lose his friendly smile, only chose new words. "It's hard to get much done while you're on a job. But once you've paid off the vessel, you can trade for passage to the corporeal plane on your own time, and go start working on getting some hooks."

"Oh." She flipped a page in her magazine, already bored with him. "I hope that happens soon. It's so dull to be stuck in here. I could just die."

Jack stood up again. "I'm sure it'll be soon," he said, and left the room.

The Djinn he found in the center of the house, staring at the bathroom door and clutching a bleeding hand. "I'm sure there are places that make straightjackets in child sizes," she said, not looking at Jack as he approached. "I'm quite sure of it."

"And if we'd had more warning about this particular mission, maybe we could have grabbed one," Jack said. He took her hand to see how bad the wound was, ignoring her frown. The blood ran briskly down. Not as dangerous on a celestial vessel as it would be for a human, but likely to make that hand unusable. "This doesn't look like a bite."

"The brat managed to break the mirror. With the handcuffs. I don't think letting her have heavy metal around her wrists is a good idea." The Djinn pulled her hand away to suck on the cut. "You wouldn't think human children would be this destructive," she said, words muffled around her hand. "Such a brat."

"You haven't done much Earth duty before, have you?"

"First time." The Djinn leaned back against the door. "Anyway. No windows in there. She's not going anywhere. The door's locked."

"From the inside or the outside?"

The Djinn only sulked, blood running over her lower lip.

Jack suppressed a sigh of his own. "Get the Habbalite to fix that for you. This is a bad time to have one of your hands not working. I'll watch the door until you get back."

"The kid--"

"Is in a locked room with one exit. It'll take five minutes. Go." He sharpened his voice on the last order, and the Djinn's maimed hand twitched as she left, as if she were trying to call up a salute.

Jack waited until she was out of sight, then rapped on the door. "You can't stay in there forever, Katherine."

"Try me!" Fierce and confident. It stood to reason that a demon's pet would have a stronger will than most children.

"If you're going to be unreasonable about this," Jack said, "I'm going to have to tell Regan. And you'll end up in the basement again with the Punisher. Do you want that?"

A long pause stretched on the other side of the door. "You can't make me come out," Katherine said, but her voice had lost some of the defiance.

Jack grinned, knowing she couldn't see it. Humans could be so simple to manipulate. "You'll get hungry eventually."

"I brought cans of food from the kitchen."

"And a can opener?"

"I'm not _stupid_."

"Apparently not," Jack muttered. He raised his voice. "Katherine, if you want to lock yourself in the bathroom, go ahead. But you can't stab people. What did that poor Djinn ever do to you? You know she wouldn't hurt you."

The door thudded, as if someone had kicked it hard from the other side. "She's a bad person!" Katherine shouted. "You all are!"

"Maybe," Jack said. "It depends on your point of view. Though I don't think a kid who used to set fire to houses for fun has much room to speak on the matter of good and bad."

"That was a long time ago," Katherine said. "And _I_ never killed anyone."

Jack counted out the seconds. Three of them, just long enough to make a thoughtful pause. "Are you sure?"

The Djinn came stalking back, hand bloody but no longer bleeding. "She's still inside?"

"Still inside." Jack shrugged. "Don't worry about it. She's not likely to come to any harm locked in a bathroom, right?"

"She could get cut on the glass," the Djinn said, scratching at the blood on her knuckles. "I could break down the door..."

"Not tonight," Jack said, and left the two of them to each other.

Back in the kitchen, Regan had finished the book, returned to the beginning. Jack wondered if she even read it, or only turned familiar pages while she mulled over whatever version of the text her Balseraph mind had devised out of the original. He spoke before she'd bothered to acknowledge him. "Didn't exactly get the cream of the crop for this mission, did you?"

Regan didn't even raise her eyes. "Apparently not, given who I was stuck with for my second in command. But it'll suffice."

"Are you sure? There's a great deal of unknown we're up against here." Jack flipped open a cupboard idly, spotted the section where a swathe of cans had been removed. He'd have to talk to the Djinn about keeping the kid on a shorter leash. Ten to one she'd been stashing the cans away one at time, unnoticed by the dull-eyed demon. Working with a bunch of incompetent beginners on a project with barely more than minimum approval... He itched to be somewhere else, anywhere else. Too many more days in one location and he might start stabbing people himself, even if he did get the privilege of doing all the chores outisde the house.

"I have the bases covered," Regan said, all her tone indicating disapproval of his question. As if the constant insults weren't reminder enough of what she thought of him. "This position's too secure for him to try anything violent or sneaky. He'll have to talk his way in, and at that point we have him."

"Unless he gets annoyed and decides to blow the whole place up," Jack said. "A secure defensive position also means we can't _leave_. We could use a little more mobility."

The Balseraph looked up at him with contemptuous eyes. She reminded him far too much of Malakim he'd known. "Still looking to run away, Jack? Try to remember who you're working for now."

Jack reminded himself that attacking a superior officer was a bad strategy for career advancement. Anything he might have said, regretted or not, was interrupted by a hammering on the front door.

Regan stood up in one fluid motion, reminding Jack that she was still faster than he was. Not so fine with the fiddly bits, perhaps, but better at running a sword through someone as the occasion called for it. "Too urgent for sales, and too late in the day," she said. "Get the door."

Jack suppressed a comment, but stalked downstairs to the basement before she could object. "Security camera on the front door," he said. "What's there?"

The Habbalite spun away from his inspection of the steady glowing lights to check the screens. "That's...um. Uniforms. Looks like the local police."

"Beautiful." Jack patted the Habbalite on a shoulder. "Keep an eye on those cameras for now. You see anyone near the other entrances, shout."

"But the lights--"

"I'm sure you can keep your attention on two different sets of information when they're both right in front of you," Jack said, and wondered just how well the Habbalite had been watching the cameras. Too late to worry about it now. He took the stairs back up three at a time. "Regan? Police at the front door. I'll--"

"What, talk your way out of this? Spare me." Regan pulled her jacket closer around her, so that the holster at her side wasn't visible. "Another stupid ploy to draw us out. I'll explain things."

Jack shoved his hands deep into pockets, feeling the shiver of potential dissonance at the back of his mind. It wouldn't hurt to cut and run now, before a real conflict broke out. But that wasn't about to become an option. "You're in charge," he said softly, as she strode briskly off. "Your decision."


	10. In Which Even Seraphim Get To Have Fun

"I object on principle to your cavalier use of humans in this situation," Penny says. I juggle the phone to my other hand to better use the binoculars.

"It's working, isn't it?" I don't have the view I'd like from my current position, even with binoculars and the street light providing illumination for the front of the house. I'd rather be up with Penny, even if I don't like rooftops; if I'm going to do sniping, I prefer windows, a place where I can duck behind a wall when people turn to see who's there. But then, I'm not the one with the gun. "Look, that's her, coming out. Knew it."

"I recognize her," Penny says, with such vicious delight I could almost imagine that was Regan on the other end of the line.

But no, that's Regan in front of the house, with her skull suddenly turning into red fragments. The police officers scatter back to their car, one of them lunging for the radio. "Nice shot."

"Thank you," Penny says. "Please try not to injure any of the members of the local law enforcement in whatever you do next."

"You're the one with the grenade launcher," I say, as I turn to the control panel. I didn't get a chance to plant as many festive surprises as I might have liked around that house, but I could only run about as a shadowy figure for so long, even with the power substation's death masking my own smaller disturbance. "Don't worry. I'm not trying to get any of _them_ killed."

"None of my grenades are intended to be lethal," Penny replies, but doesn't object to my statement. It's true: I'd rather avoid killing any of the humans in the area. The disturbance will be bad enough without adding that to the pile, and I'd like to get out of here before all the celestials called in from the last round of disturbance pinpoint this location.

"Just remember to get off the roof before the SWAT team shows up." The snort on the other end of the line tells me Penny doesn't need reminders from me. I grin at the phone, and tuck it away into a pocket.

This has an amazing likelihood of ending badly. Still, I get to blow a few things up, which means even if it ends in blood and tears--from people other than those I'm _trying_ to hurt--that'll be worth something.

The demons holed up in that house could use another dose of paranoia to keep them off balance. I think I'll start with the back door.


	11. An Interlude, In Which I Am Lucky

"I don't _know_ any corporeal languages," the Lilim wailed, as she cowered on the floor. "I wasn't supposed to talk to humans!"

Jack grabbed her wrist, and dragged her towards the center of the house. An awkward move while trying to keep his head down, but just because no one had started shooting through the windows yet didn't mean they weren't about to. "They're telling the people inside to come out with their hands up," he translated to Helltongue. "Ignore it and stay down." He kept back a few comments about air-headed Lilim who didn't prep for a corporeal job. This was no time to foster division in the ranks.

"They weren't supposed to shoot at me," the Lilim whimpered, but she followed. "I'm only supposed to be making deals."

Jack pushed her through the door to the basement, shifted aside to let the Habbalite run out. "Situation?" The Lilim didn't even have enough sense to head down to safety, only clung to the railing and whimpered.

"I can't tell what's going on at the back door," said the Punisher, his beads rattling about from his belt as he slid down to a crouch on the kitchen floor. Too focused on the problem at hand to even spare a sneer for the demon sniveling behind him. "Because it's _gone_ , and the camera with it. Didn't you hear that explosion? For all I know there could be half a dozen people back there--" He clutched uselessly at a sidearm, as if there were anyone present he could shoot. "Where's Regan?"

"Dead," Jack said. "She walked out to negotiate. Got shot."

The Habbalite stared at him, wide-eyed. "In the midst of _this_?"

No, Jack thought, back before people started shooting, and before three more police cars arrived. But he only said, "It was her decision to make, as commanding officer."

"Idiot."

Jack shrugged. "Pointless to argue it now. Go see if anyone's coming in the back, and shout if they are. We may need that back door."

"We can't retreat," said the Habbalite. "We can shoot our way out--"

"No!" Jack took a quick breath, modulated his tone. "Can you imagine the disturbance on top of what's already here, if we start shooting cops? And the rest of you can say goodbye to any Roles you have, along with your vessels. We are not equipped or staffed for a full-out firefight with mortal authorities. Check the door."

Another crash of disturbance, to accompany an explosion on the side of the house. Jack picked up his pace, found the Djinn methodically kicking the door to the bathroom. "I need to get the kid out," she explained, gesturing too freely with her own pistol. "To get into the basement for when they come in. It's a more defensible position. Did we lose another door?"

"Forget the kid," Jack said, and at her look of protest, snapped, "That's an _order_. Regan's dead. Get into the basement now."

Too used to command to object, the Djinn pounded away. "And get the Lilim under cover," he called after her.

The locked door stood in front of him, scuffed from the kicking. The Djinn wasn't as strong as he would have preferred in a subordinate not known for quick thinking. He pulled out his lock picks, reached for the handle--

And reconsidered. With Regan dead, the one person with a personal stake in this mission was out of the picture. Wasting Roles and vessels on a lost cause would be good money after bad. Surrender was out of the question.

If there was any consolation in this, no matter what happened, Regan was going to look bad when she woke from Trauma.

"Good luck, kid," he said, and ran off to collect the Habbalite.

They gathered in the basement, the distant smell of pepper gas making the Lilim sniffle as it began to seep downstairs. "Here's the situation," Jack said. "Regan's dead, the mission's a botch. We're not going to win any praise for spending resources on prolonging the disturbance with nothing to show for it. This is not a sufficiently important mission to justify backup. Is everyone clear?"

"I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die," chanted the Lilim. "I'm going to end up in Limbo, this was supposed to be an easy job!"

"Weak," muttered the Habbalite, who had a Heart to wake up from and could expect to earn another vessel from his Prince without paying in a long chain of Geases. "We can't retreat anyway, not without orders."

"I'm going to die, I'm going to die..."

"Shut _up_." Jack pulled the Lilim to her feet, waited until she had eye contact with him. "Now. I need something from you, and in return you're going to do something for me. Understood?" She nodded quickly, drawing in a shaky breath. "So long as I can be sure that an accurate report gets back to the General, I can salvage something of this situation."

She was not, perhaps, a complete idiot. "I'll tell him what happened," said the Lilim, "if you can get me back to Hell. That you--um--fixed things?"

"I'm going to order these two back," Jack said, patiently, and ignored the poorly concealed shudder of relief from the Habbalite. Those who berated others publicly for cowardice were, in his experience, trying to conceal their own. "They'll jump to their Hearts, and you can follow. You will tell the person they report to the exact truth of the situation. Regan got us into this, she got herself shot trying to hold it, and I'm about to go get myself shot while the rest of you avoid committing more resources to a lost cause. Understood?"

The Lilim nodded, and coughed as the pepper wafted down the staircase to rise around them. "I swear by my nature I'll pass on this information, if you just let me get back home!"

"Good." Jack stepped back, and nodded to his two subordinates. "This is the official order to retreat. I _expect_ that when I get out of Trauma, I won't find that the report's been mangled as it's passed along."

"I'm no Balseraph," said the Habbalite, drawing himself up straight. "We'll tell the General exactly what happened."

"Good. Get out of here."

More disturbance, as one after another the demons shed their vessels and fled to Hell, the Servitors of the War first, then the Lilim wasting no time to follow their trail back.

Jack listened to the front door shatter. Not an explosion, but the sound a door makes when the SWAT team has come through. He drew his gun, and sighed. There was something embarrassing about pretending to be a lousy shot, but no point in killing humans without need. They were only doing their job, as much as he was doing his. With any luck they'd be sufficiently skilled to get in a head shot, such that he wouldn't have to bleed out painfully before hitting Trauma.

Footsteps pounded along the floor overhead. They'd get down to the basement soon. Jack sang softly as he kept his gun pointed at the door to the basement so that they'd be sure to see it on the way in, "Know when to hold them, and know when to fold them, and know when to walk away..."


	12. An Interlude, In Which Nurture Beats Out Nature

When the gas crept in and made her cough, Katherine grabbed a hand towel from the cupboard, then ran water over it until it was soaked through. She held this over her face to breathe through, and hoped that whatever sort of gas they were using worked like smoke. It wasn't much use: her eyes itched madly and began to tear up, and the stuff seeped right through the wet towel to make her cough even harder, her whole throat hurting worse than ever before.

When the shooting started, Katherine curled up in the bathtub, right where Leo'd told her to hide if bullets were a danger. She ran the water from the faucet, no matter that it turned her sleeves wet from splashing on where she was lying, and tried to wash out her eyes. Somewhere in the house, people were using guns on each other, just the way they shouldn't. If anyone from the Tether had come to rescue her, they wouldn't be shooting. They'd be sneaking in, or talking, or doing something calm and quiet. It wasn't them come to save her.

When the door broke open, Katherine was too miserable even to cry out, only kept on coughing into the towel. It wasn't going to be anything good. Only people getting into stupid fights. People kept killing each other and it never turned to anything good.

But a man dressed all in black and heavy equipment with a mask on pulled her out of the bathtub, and when she tried to kick him he only said, "Hey, hey, it's okay, we're the good guys," in a voice tinny and odd through the mask.

Katherine wanted to say, everyone says that. They all think they're on the right side. But she was too busy coughing, tears running down her face, until he must have thought she was crying from fear. Not that she'd cry over something like that. It never helped. She let him carry her outside, no matter that she was too old for that sort of thing, out into bright spinning red and blue lights from more police cars than she'd ever seen in one place before, and a big black van, a fire truck, an ambulance. She couldn't see anything but all the vehicle lights through the smoke and the tears in her own eyes, and so there was nothing to be done but let herself be carried back towards the ambulance.

"It's going to be okay," said the man in black. "We've got you now. It's going to be okay." He set her down in front of the paramedics, who had sprays and cloths to help clean her face. Someone put a blanket over her shoulders, and as soon as she stopped coughing a little there was a juice box to sip from to clear her throat. All these strangers clustering around her.

"I want to go home," Katherine whispered, tears still rolling down her cheeks from painful eyes.

One of the police officers, an old man with enough of a belly it looked like he wasn't the sort to go running into buildings, tried to offer her a teddybear to hug. Katherine pulled her knees up under her chin. "Do you know where your parents are, little girl?" he asked her, in a slow voice, as if she was five years old. "Can you tell me your name?"

"My name is Katherine," she said. "Spelled with a K, not with a C. And my parents are dead." It was close enough to the truth, and maybe her long-vanished father was as dead as her mother. Or maybe he didn't care. No one had come to save her but the police. Wasn't Perle supposed to come save her? And what about Iris? No one had come but ordinary people who didn't know what they were fighting. She thrust away the teddybear. "I want to go home."

A knot of police officers shifted, moving to deal with reporters arriving in their own vans with cameras and floodlights at the ready. Behind them, at the edge of the mass of cars and flashing lights, stood a man in a brown jacket, speaking quietly with an officer. Not very tall, all his clothes wrinkled as if he'd been sleeping in them, a backpack slung over one shoulder. He looked like an out of sorts kindergarten teacher, trying to reason with a student's parent.

Katherine dropped down from the ambulance, and ran. "Leo!" she shouted, over all the noise of people and sirens and crackling fires, no matter that it was straight through a patch of smoke to set her coughing again. She dropped the juice box, threw the blanket off her. "Leo, over here!"

He'd set it up. Managed to rescue her without stepping inside the house. It was the sort of thing he'd do, no matter how much Regan tried to plan to catch him. And now he was going to disappear again if she didn't catch him first.

But he didn't step away into the night, or feign incomprehension. When he turned to look at her, he smiled, and when she threw herself at him, he pulled her up in his arms, as if she were still seven years old and small enough to ride on his shoulders. 

"Don't leave me again," she whispered fiercely into his ear. "Don't you ever leave me again."

He held her tight. "I wasn't planning on it."


	13. In Which I Take Matters Into My Own Hands

With Katherine's enthusiastic confirmation of anything I say, the suspicion I was encountering dies out. I did call ahead to let them know that I was coming, and filled in all the gaps in their understanding of the situation. The paramedics insist on hauling Katherine off for a few more minutes of making sure the pepper gas isn't having any unpleasant side-effects. I spend the time sitting next to her, the kid's hand wrapped tight around mine. 

Penny pushes his way through the crowd of reporters just as the paramedics are finishing up, his expression suggesting he's had too many run-ins with the Media to be fond of any humans in related fields. He glowers down one reporter who's pushed past the police line so cuttingly that the woman cowers back with a mumbled apology. "I see you've found each other," he says, when he's standing in front of us. "Any lingering problems?"

"I'm _fine_ , Uncle Penny," Katherine says, and then coughs hard enough to show that as a lie. She gabs at another proffered juice box. "Mostly fine. I didn't know you were here too."

"I'm sorry I took so long," I say, and glance over my shoulder. The paramedics are trying to give us space, tidying up the ambulance in a show of busy-work. It doesn't seem that anyone else is suffering from worse than smoke inhalation, and they're not dragging any wounded bodies out of the house. I wonder if Regan's lackeys decided to cut and run once she was down, dissonance or not. I was expecting a stiffer fight. But here we are, with Katherine barely hurt and not a human dead that I can see. Even Penny couldn't complain. "I didn't hear you were gone until recently, and it took me a few days to come collect you."

"I knew you'd come," says Katherine, with such bright confidence I know she's trying to lie to herself. She didn't believe I would.

"So did Regan," says Penny, hands in his pockets. He's still standing, a sentinel against the crowd.

"Thus the problem." I drape an arm over Katherine's shoulder. "Ready to go?"

" _So_ ready," she says. She still won't let go of my hand.

"Penny, if you'd give me the keys, I'll go take Katherine to the car. Could you call Iris to let him know she's safe?" I take the offered keys, and maintain a weary smile until he's pushing back through the crowd, trying to find a quieter spot for the phone conversation. "Okay, kid. Time for us to get moving."

I enlist a young police officer in helping me find a way around the reporters, with explanations of how Katherine's just a child, doesn't need this sort of attention right now after such a hard night. Her tear-streaked face is argument enough, and soon we're out past the crowd to a dark back street. If I've been caught on a camera or two, well, there's no helping it now. I couldn't claim much anonymity in this project after this much disturbance. "Car's this way," I say, and lead Katherine on down the street to where we parked earlier. I've already taken the time to clean up the traces of my involvement in the explosions from a distance, and Penny's taken care of clues that might lead to his sniper work. 

She slides into the front seat, and coughs again. "My throat hurts."

"Probably the pepper gas. It should clear up soon." I take the driver's seat, and turn the car on. "I'll stop at a drive-through to grab you a soda on the way out of the city."

"I'd rather have juice, if it's available. Carbonation is bad for the teeth." She draws her knees up to her chest. "Are we going to meet up with Penny somewhere else?"

"No, we're not. He's staying behind."

She slides me a sidelong look. "Does he know that?"

"He'll figure it out. He's not stupid." I pause at a stop sign, and lean back to dig out her bag from where it was stowed in the back seat. "Here. I brought your bag."

"You stopped by the Tether." She pulls the backpack onto her lap, begins digging inside. "Did Perle and Iris ask you to come find me, then?"

"Perle's still in Trauma, last I heard." I realize as I say it that she must not have heard; if Ling was shot next to her, but Perle elsewhere beforehand, she probably never got the news of the Cherub losing a vessel as well. Her sudden blank look is enough to confirm that. "She'll probably be out soon. Cherubim are used to losing vessels. It's practically their job."

"She's not really dead," Katherine says, sliding down in her seat. "It's not the same thing. She's going to be okay." She picks at an incipient hole in the knee of her pants. "Are we going back to the Flowers Tether now?"

"No, we're not."

"Why not?" Enough of the shock has worn off, and the thrill of seeing me again, that she's returning to a more familiar mood. "That's where I live."

"Not anymore, Katherine. I made the mistake of dropping you off with angels once, believing they could protect you. Obviously, they can't. They couldn't keep you safe from Regan, and they couldn't get you back without my help." I know I'm coming across as irate, but Katherine's won't take it personally. No, she'll find reasons of her own to snap right back. "If they can't protect you, I'm not giving you back so that they can lose you again."

"Are you going to protect me? You're just one person. You run _away_ from dangerous things." And there's the kid I taught to set fires, sneaking back out from terror and joy to be her own bratty little self.

"I had more in mind teaching you to protect yourself." I have to wait until a red light to lean down and dig under the seat until I find the case. "Here you go. Happy birthday, a month late. I picked it up for you when I was loading up on explosives." I snap open the latches, then the light's green and I have to leave her to finding out what's inside on her own.

Katherine turns the gun around in her hands, eyes wide. "I'm not supposed to use this."

"Why not? It's not that hard. Point it in about the right direction of what you want to shoot, pull the trigger. You've used one before."

"I'm _ten_ ," she says, indignantly. "Why are you giving me a gun? This is dangerous."

"Because you can't do much harm with it."

"Guns kill people." She's turned into quite the sanctimonious brat in the time she's spent with Flowers. Predictable enough.

"Not in any important way." I lean down to pick up the gun from where she's set it, and drop it back in her lap. "Let me summarize. If you kill angels or demons, they come back eventually. No great loss. It's just a vessel. If you kill humans, they go on to Heaven if they deserve it, Hell if they deserve that, and get another chance otherwise. Again, no great loss. You're speeding up the inevitable. Shoot whoever you feel like needs shooting, and don't stress over it."

"I could get hurt," she says.

"So don't point it at yourself. This isn't rocket science, Katherine." I shift gears as I hit the highway, and wonder how long I can keep going like this. I'll think about it later.

"I could hurt _you_."

"Look, if you're going to shoot me, don't do it while I'm driving. That's a good way to get yourself into a nasty accident. Second, if you do decide to shoot me in the back of the head, do me a favor and dump my body somewhere else afterwards. It'll give me a better chance of escaping notice when I get out of Limbo."

"Don't you even care?" Her voice is tending towards shrill. The kid's understandably upset, but I don't have time for it.

"At this point, I could use the peace and quiet. So listen to your uncle Leo when he tells you to sit down, put on your seat belt, and shut up."

She flops back into her seat, and pulls on the seat belt. "You're not really my uncle."

"And your Aunt Esther wasn't really your aunt, but that never bothered you before."

"She was an angel." Katherine's words are clipped, hurt, challenging. She's under the impression she's surprised me with this knowledge.

"And you think that makes her better than me." This is probably about the time that I should shut up, but I'm tired and angry and too far through a long series of stupid decisions to regret making another one now. "I wasn't the one killing humans back when we met."

"She wouldn't do that," Katherine says, and she'd like to believe that, to believe that I'm adding on one more lie to what I've told her before. But she knows better.

"Do you think all angels are like Ling? That they're all nice people who give out hugs to those who need them and never tell lies?" My eyes are on the road, but I can hear the way her breathing changes. "I'll let you in on the secret, Katherine. Angels kill and steal and lie. They'll blackmail and torture and betray if that's what does the job. Just the same as demons. Maybe they don't do it for fun as often, but they'll do all the same things and feel good about it. Your sample group isn't representative of the whole. It's representative of the sort of people I felt it was safe to leave you with. Of course, with how badly they screwed up keeping you safe, maybe I should have left you with the more aggressive types of angels."

"They're angels," Katherine says. "They're good. They're good people, they don't do bad things." She sounds as if she might burst into tears. Not what I intended, and exactly what I could have predicted if I'd been thinking before I spoke.

Too late to take it back. I'll stick to the truth. "You want to know the real difference between angels and demons? It's not what we're willing to do. It's that angels look at the big picture, and see their place in it. If they decide bombs need to be dropped on some city, they'll drop those bombs and shrug off civilian casualties, because that's what had be done. They're willing to die for what they believe is right, the permanent death where your soul gets ripped to shreds and you're dead forever, to serve that higher goal, and they're willing to soul-kill other people for the same reasons. Go talk to the angels who serve War, and see how much it bothers them to line up in battle and go kill some poor drafted human who's only fighting because he has no choice. It's all part of the big picture, the driving purpose of the Symphony, and they will keep stomping along towards victory no matter what gets in their way. And they will feel _good_ about it, because they know they're right."

I take a breath, sneak a look at Katherine. She's pale, not crying yet, staring right back at me. I give her a shrug. "Me, I'm a demon. I don't see the picture. I don't have any grand plans. I'm a selfish bastard with situational morality and not much of that. Right now, the only things I care about protecting are me and you, and I'll be as ruthless and evil as I have to be to keep us safe. That's what makes me the bad guy. Because I'm willing to stomp all over the greater good to get what I want.

"Hell's big on the propaganda that we're the noble rebels in this war, fighting for our freedom. We're not. We're a bunch of sociopaths and solipsists fighting it out to see who gets to oppress everyone else, now that we've moved out from Heaven doing the job for us. Instead of one big picture every one of us has a little personal symphony that tells us we're the center of the world, and it all ought to revolve around us. If we ever fought Heaven off, we'd only rip each other to shreds faster. And I'm done with that game, Katherine. I'm not about to play to Heaven's big picture or to Hell's delusions of righteousness. Either side would rip me to pieces, whether I was for them or against them, in the end. So I might as well work to save what I care about, and fuck both sides of the War if they try to get in my way."

She's quiet for a few minutes, a long time for a kid, watching the scenery streaming on past us.

"Just you and me," she says. "Why me? Why not just you? Why do you care?"

"Damned if I know," I say. I'm damned either way. "But, yeah, you have that right. Just you and me."


	14. In Which Compromises Are Made

It's just before three in the morning. I need to ditch this car soon; Penny's worked out by now that I've skipped out on him with no intention of checking back in, and the car was rented under his name. I'm not sure that he'd report the car as stolen, but neither am I sure that he wouldn't. Time to find a vehicle that can't be traced so easily.

Only slightly less urgent is working out short-term plans for dealing with the kid. If it were just me, I could return to that ethereal Tether, pay for a trip to the Marches, and hide exactly where I was. But that doesn't do Katherine any good, and I'm no longer willing to leave her into someone else's care. Which means I need to find some way of acquiring money on a regular basis, enough to keep her fed, clothed, and occasionally entertained. Without putting her or me into significant unavoidable danger, and while staying away from anyone from the Game, or the War, or any of the various Words in Heaven likely to be irked at me.

I've been working on this problem since Katherine stopped talking and curled up to sleep. I still don't like any of the conclusions I've reached. Unfortunately, I'm working with limited options, and no superior conclusions are presenting themselves.

There's a parking lot adjoining a bus terminal, half-lit with several of the streetlights broken. More to the point, there are a few unattended cars in the lot. I pull in, turn off the engine. Katherine shifts in her sleep, but doesn't open her eyes.

"I'll be back in a few minutes," I say, in case she's only feigning sleep. "I need to make a call." Her eyes stay shut, even when I shut the car door behind me.

There's a bank of old pay phones at the edge of the terminal, graffiti-covered and battered. Empty metal covers that once held phone books dangle from each unit. I manage to find enough change in my pocket for the listed rate. It didn't seem like a good idea to hold onto the cell phone once I left Penny behind. He would've called. I might've answered.

I've memorized a few phone numbers over the last several years. The number for the architectural firm where I used to work wouldn't be active anymore, and the number for Regan's room in the college dorms would lead to someone else. I'm in no mood to call Al or the Flowers Tether. But I do have one number that I haven't had opportunity to use since I jaunted off to the peace and quiet of the Marches, that being Sean's.

I don't want to talk to a Mercurian of War. But if he's willing to be forgiving about the way I disappeared, I may still be able to get paying work from him. And unlike Trade or Flowers, he's practical enough to not throw a fit about me keeping Katherine around.

I pick up the first receiver. No dial tone. There's not so much as a whisper of static from the second either, or the third. At the end of the fourth, I come to a taped-up piece of paper, declaring the phones to be out of service. It's dated from four months ago, and barely still attached to where it's been repeatedly fastened with more and more pieces of tape.

It's been a trying week.

The notice disappears in a puff of smoke, the paper fragments so fine they're nearly a mist. I work my way through the phone receivers, the phone book covers, the empty machines that start spilling their guts after a few blasts of my resonance. Then it's on to the metal poles they're attached to, the hoods to keep out the rain, and by the time it's all a pile of twisted metal, the wall they're attached to.

I've been keeping this pent up for longer than I wanted, and my own cracked nature is in fine form tonight, not giving me so much as a hiccup while I explain to the wall exactly where it would end in a few centuries, left alone. Everything crumbles and decays if you give it long enough. I'm just lending a helpful hand.

I stop before the wall keels over; that's more noise than I'm ready to deal with, and my temper's faded back into something manageable. The attunement my Prince gave me in Fire may mask disturbance from my resonance, but it won't cover an entire wall collapsing. One last kick at the wall is enough to settle my mood. Paint and cement crumble at the touch, sliding down into a pile on the ground with the tiniest crackle of disturbance. The wall looks like someone's taken a sledgehammer to it, and the bank of phones is worse off. In a petty way, it's been highly satisfying. When all else is said and done, I'm still a Calabite.

"Not bad work," says someone behind me, "if on the haphazard side."

I don't spin around, because if someone is sneaking up on me, I'm not going to give them the satisfaction of my suprise. Instead, I shrug and turn about to see who's there. A tall man, dressed in clothes too expensive for what they've gone through, as if he went clubbing and then brawling. He smiles at me, and if I don't recognize him, I do recognize that smile. It's one I use from time to time. Usually around people who know I'm a Calabite, and need to be warned away from irritating me. I don't much like it coming from someone else.

"I was in a hurry," I say lightly. "I'm only passing through."

"Really? Where to?" He doesn't step any closer, but I doubt he'd need to. We're both radiating perfect confidence, but I know mine is false. I can't count on the same being true for him.

"Haven't decided yet." I gesture breezily off towards an unspecified distance. "Somewhere else."

"It's a good idea to keep moving," the man says, and strolls closer, hands in his pockets. "Stay in one place too long, and people might catch up with you. Wouldn't want that, would you?"

"Probably not," I say. He's still between me and the car, and I'm not about to turn my back on someone this...confident. "I should be on my way."

"Soon enough." He stops in front of me, close enough to put a hand on my shoulder if he wanted to, and he's still smiling with that smug, dangerous air. "You know, Leo, I heard a funny thing from one of my kids. Seems that one way or another, there are people who are under the impression you're working for me. But I think I'd remember if I'd taken you into my service, don't you think?"

Oh.

Shit.

"People draw the weirdest conclusions from incomplete information," I say, as calmly as I can manage, which isn't very.

"There are people," says Valefor, Demon Prince of Theft, and someone able to shred my Forces from where he's standing if he feels like it, "who take a dim view of demons running around on Earth without being in service to any Prince." He laughs. It's infectious and charming. I'm terrified. "Of course, most of them also object to _me_ , so who cares what those people think?" He grins down at me, a bright white smile that doesn't hide the possibility of sharp teeth. I had the Calabite part right. That's destruction looking for an outlet. I know how that feels from the inside. "Tell me, did you learn anything new and exciting while running around Renegade, without a Prince to tell you what to do?"

My mouth's gone dry. I could do without having a vessel that applies the same responses human bodies do to fear. "Not to leave anything in the safekeeping of angels, not to trust a loyal Servitor of either side, and that since there's nowhere safe to hide, the next best option is to be a moving target."

"Good lessons," Valefor says. He puts a hand on my shoulder. "Leo, I think I like your style. And I also think I get enough flak for what my Servitors do without taking it for what unaffiliated demons choose to do. So how about you decide to sign up with me, and I decide to let you live?"

"Sounds like an opportunity I shouldn't pass up."

"Smart Destroyer. That's what opportunity's like," he says, shaking his head. "Fickle bitch that she is. Catch her when she's smiling at you, because you're not getting a second chance if she starts to frown." He steps back, and points at me. "Good advice, right there. Try to remember it."

I nod mutely, my mind gone numb around the edges. The Prince chuckles. "So what's left?" He snaps his fingers. "Right, making it official. Leo, Renegade Calabite of Lucifer knows what by this point, do you willingly bind yourself to my service, for as long as I care to have you there?" Another nod from me. I don't trust myself to speak. "Then by the power vested in me by, hey, the Word I stole for myself, isn't _that_ appropriate, I pronounce you mine." 

One more snap of his fingers, and I can feel it. Somewhere on the celestial that I've never been, a Heart calling me back home. I couldn't follow it there without dying. I'm going to make a point of staying alive until I've done enough for him--for my new Prince, I don't even want to think it, but there it is--to justify another vessel. It's easier to escape the Marches than Hell.

And there, in the more fragmented corners of my soul, the places where I ripped free from my last Heart and service, a new whisper. No more crackling flames or war drums. This time it's a cheerful whisper. Keep running and don't get caught, don't get caught, don't get caught, keep on running and don't get caught.

I have no idea what to say.

Valefor claps me on the back. "Welcome to the family," he says, as cheerful as ever. It's going to take some getting used to, having a Prince this full of smiles. I'm sure he's no less dangerous than those who snarl. "Sooner or later I'll point some of the other kids in your direction to give you some pointers, but for now you can take care of yourself. And, hey," he makes a show of checking his watch, "you'd better get moving, because someone looking for you is showing up here in twenty minutes. Good luck!"

He saunters away, confident as any Prince strolling the corporeal plane has the right to be. Passing a car, he kicks idly at the door, and it springs open as he moves on across the parking lot.

I take longer than I should to pull myself back together, then I go wake up Katherine.

She yawns widely as she gets up. "Where are we going?"

"Another car," I say. "Lend me a hand with the stuff in the trunk, would you?"

"I'm _tired_ ," she says, but pulls herself out of the car to help. I notice she's carrying the pistol case, no matter how she objected to it earlier. It's going to take a few weeks to undo the rampant pacifism she's been exposed to. I'd better get it out of her system before we meet other demons. They're more likely to leave her in peace if they know she can shoot them in the back.

By the time the last of the boxes are packed into the new car, Katherine's wide awake. She takes her seat in the front of the car, and pulls on her seatbelt. "Where are we going next?"

"I'm not sure," I say. "Let's get some distance between us and where they were keeping you. Just in case anyone comes looking."

She nods, and stares out the window at the parking lot. "Leo? What are we going to do after that? I mean, if I'm not going back home--back to the Tether."

"We're going to keep on moving," I say. The whisper jaunts through all my bones, too bright and eager, already suggesting new places to be that aren't here. "Don't worry. We'll be fine as long as we keep moving."


End file.
